VanRail 2025 and Beyond

VanRail, that biannual international operating extravaganza, took place on September 12-14. This year, I opened Pembroke as a “Preview layout.” It is still premature to say Pembroke is ready to host operating sessions, especially the freshly-ballasted bits. I felt I could be ready by 2027, and so I thought I would offer it for preview. […]

Slinging Grass at the Fields

In a final dash to improve the layout before this weekend’s VanRail open house, I warmed up the static grass machine and let it loose on the fields in the foreground of the engine facility. In the messy flurry of ground foam, flock and glue, I learned several new tricks and techniques. On second day, […]

Filling Gaps

With my VanRail open house almost upon me, I’m racing to get a little more scenery presentable. Now, what to do about the gaps in the scenery caused by my preference for modular construction? The big gaps were easy to fill with some ground goop, but there are some smaller cracks that also need filling, […]

Wheat Field Experiments

At the end of summer, a wheat field should be a beautiful golden straw colour, and the seed heads should be well-formed and heavy. My research indicates that the varieties available in 1905 were taller than those we have today, which themselves are waist-height. Initially I thought I could make use of a Silflor grass […]

1000 Posts on Pembroke87

I just received a notification that this week’s inauspicious post about repairing the turntable was the 1000th post to this blog. Knowing they’re just trying to gamify their platform, I usually ignore such notifications, but 1000 seems like a good moment to reflect back on the embarrassingly long time I’ve been writing about the challenges […]

Ugly Turntable Repair

A few months ago, as I was turning the engine for another run, there was a clatter and an odd-shaped piece of brass tube tumbled onto my desk below the layout. It took me a moment to realize it was one of the indexing tubes for the turntable. After repeated locking and un-locking, the stress […]