Craftsman’s Corner 2024

By all accounts his weekend’s Vancouver Train Expo was a roaring success. It was perfect train show weather – raining enough to keep people focused indoors, but not so awful that they wouldn’t go out – and the ticket sales reflected that opportunity. Over at the Craftsman’s Corner, we had a steady stream of visitors […]

Mock Cattle Chutes

We’re coming up on Vancouver Train Expo, and once again I’ll be parked behind the table at Craftsman’s corner for half a day. I need a project to bring, and so, I started developing plans for the cattle pens, of which Pembroke had two. I couldn’t find any prototype plans amongst my own resources, so […]

Oktobahnfest 2024

This week, the North Shore model railroaders came by to check on progress at Pembroke. Our organizer, Graham, holds an annual gathering of the North Shore in December that he calls Trains and Scones. So, my Darling Wife and I decided we needed a theme for our own, which was in October for the second […]

Swinging around IPMS Vancouver

The Vancouver chapter of the International Plastic Modellers Society holds their annual show on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and occasionally I remember to go. This year, I had the pleasure of The Boy’s company. Frankly, I barely know what I’m looking at, but it’s always worth a turn around the display to see some outstanding […]

Installing the Water Tower

Even if DCC promises that you need only two wires for your whole layout, of course they are going to be in the way. I had made a cut-out in the water tower base to avoid moving the bus wires. However, there was no way to steer clear of the wire for my under-layout desk […]

Water tower mechanism in action

My goal when designing the controls for Pembroke has been to simulate the actions of real railroaders, but smaller and lighter. Real railroading is heavy, dangerous work, after all! When it comes to the Pembroke water tower, this means there is, of course, no button. Almost nothing had a button in 1905, except for the […]

Water Tower Electronics Installed

With the last gremlin exorcised from the electronics project board, I’ve turned the workbench back to physical mode. During testing, I found that the limit switch was not in fact making contact with the linear actuator. I considered hacking it, but it was easier to tweak the design of the bracket and print a fresh […]

Water Tank Speaker

I’m still grappling with the electronics aspect of the water tank. The two switches are no longer a problem, but now the MP3 player stops all processing when the volume changes. I’m sure I’ll get past this one too: it’s just a matter of experimenting and probably more soldering and unsoldering. In the meantime, here […]

Back to the Breadboard

So, it turns out there’s such a thing as a pull-up resistor that pulls a pin away from ground so that when the pin is shorted to ground using, say a micro-switch connected to a valve rope on a water tower, the microcontroller can detect the change. Without the pull-up resistor, the input is said […]

Tender Truck Proof of Concept

The first print was too tight, and the second print was too loose. The third print was just right! So after playing with the action for a few days and showing it to my friends, I soldered some .010″ phosphor-bronze wire to some custom-made brass tube bearings, and assembled the truck. Honestly, it could roll […]