Three flats is enough

Ellen Hood played flute in high school band across from me and my clarinet. Apparently, I was poorer than most kids at hiding my hobby as she found out about it, and introduced me to her dad, Tom. For several years afterward, I joined Tom’s work sessions on Tuesday evenings, I guess until I moved […]

Organizing the flat cars

It’s funny how jobs stack up. I needed to design the bolsters for the flat cars, which meant I needed to measure the truck bolsters, which meant that I had to find some trucks. These, along with most of my detail castings, live in one of the cabinets above the layout, and they’re a bit […]

MFK Fisher: How to write how to

A few weeks ago, I resolved to add MFK Fisher to my reading list. Perhaps by studying some of her work, I might be able to kick my own instructional writing up a notch in the literary sense. I found a thick collection at the local library, and heaved it home one Sunday afternoon. To […]

Flatcar weight plan

The thing that makes flatcars challenging is surely how to make them heavy enough to stay on the track when they are empty. If it makes you feel any better, it looks like real railroads had the same problem back in the wood car era. They appear to have blocked empty flats near the back […]

The story of Canada Atlantic flat cars

I have been thainking that I need a side project while completing the heavy shop. Most nights, I’m not able to make progress on the woodworking as it’s too late to run the table saw. Casting about for a little diversion, I thought about making some flat cars. The first step is to get the […]

The madness of Chester Machniewski

What an enormous pleasure it was to meet Chester Machniewski today! Here is a man whose welcome and smile were eclipsed only by his fanaticism for model trains. Lots of people have passions, but few take them to Chester’s affectation. As far as I could tell, he does nothing on a small scale. Need a […]

Operations ideas from BC Hydro

My friend, Colin Dover, intimated to me last night that he builds layouts purely so he can have a place to switch. A couple of years ago, he tore out his representation of Vancouver Waterfront to build his “much simpler” Central Park line of BC Hydro. I put “much simpler” in quotes because, well, it […]

The heavy shop takes shape

When I asked my wife what she thought of the new workshop cabinet, she said it looks “workshoppy.” Okay, I’ll admit, the joinery is not as nice as I would like, but you’ve gotta love those 4″ deep drawers, and the big cavern behind those doors is sized for a future Sherline mill. I’m also […]

The Art of X-Ray Reading

I picked up Roy Peter Clark’s The Art of X-Ray Reading at Mosaic Books in Kelowna last weekend. While the book seems tailored more to writers of fiction, I read it mainly to improve my railroad writing. There are so many suggestions in the book that even if I ignore the ones about naming characters […]

A Peculiar layout?

The kids and I have been reading a wonderful pair of books by Stefan Bachmann. The Peculiar and The Whatnot are set in a version of Victorian England on the cusp of war with faeries from an alternate world. It’s an evocative steam punk vision of technology diverted from steam-power to magical-power. A grimy, gritty […]