110 Posts for the Coal Dock

The laser-cut base for the Coal Dock made the alignment of all 110 posts a diddle. I made the holes so that the base held them, but not too snugly. So, each post slipped into its hole with a minimal fuss, and there was a little room to allow for straightening if required, but also […]

Coal Dock Base

For the most part, the coal dock is a simple model. The tricky bit is going to be getting the legs all evenly spaced and plumb. To help with that, I decided to cut a base with the laser. This, in turn necessitated a rough 3D design, which took an evening to put together. I […]

Little Sister

My post about the engine lead buildings prompted me to pull #10 out of the roundhouse, where it’s been languishing since giving up its decoder to #622 some years ago. This was the first time I’d ever seen #10 next to #1120, and the difference in size was so stark, I wanted to share it. […]

Coaling Two Engines

My last post about the coaling station prompted me to re-examine my sources. I found a second mention in the 1908 Bridges and Buildings book, which gives 92’x12’ as the actual size of the coal dock. There were half a dozen other coal docks on the Canada Atlantic, and they were all a more modest […]

The Herd are out to Pasture

I didn’t quite finish them ahead of the visit from the North Shore model railroaders on Wednesday evening. However now that the herd have been installed in the field, I’m delighted with the way they turned out. Thanks to Craig Townsend, I made six cows 7.5% smaller than the rest to form the more distant […]

Electrical Capitulation

Over on his blog, Modeling the SP, Tony Thompson maintains a thread he calls Electrical Wars. When I read these posts, as well as the accompanying Trackwork Wars, I immediately feel a sense of comradeship. We all struggle with short circuits and tight gauge, but not many do it quite so openly. I brought in […]

Annulling 51 and 52

As I only have one passenger car, one engine and a few freight cars, I’ve only been running the branch line trains. The through trains to and from Ottawa, 51 and 52, are going to need a lot more stock than I have today, and I’ve been eliding them as a result. This is okay […]

Engine Lead Buildings

Thanks to Marty McGuirk for reminding me to think about the story I want to tell when putting together this scene. I’ve always maintained that the whole layout should build from right to left, getting more and more lively and optimistic as it goes. Here at the right end of the layout, it should be […]

Mock-up Coaling platform

The information on the coaling platform in Pembroke is scant. We have a mention that there was one in the 1908 GTR Bridges and Buildings book, with the note “Shovelled into Ten.” There is a turntable-long rectangle on the Grand Trunk Railway’s 1918 Plan of Pembrok (NMC 145203-1) that indicates its location along the engine […]

Prototype Modelling for Cattle

It kind of started as a joke: why not model individual cows for my pasture? It didn’t take long to find a couple of dozen photos of Ayrshire cattle, but the prospect of reproducing them in HO scale would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it? I was laughing at myself for even thinking of this idea. Well, […]