What a difference a half-decade makes

The new sound decoder for #10 arrived last week, and I just took it out of the box. Wow, it is a lot smaller than the old decoder! This should be a cinch to fit into the tender, and may enable me to add a little more lead to bring the tender up to NMRA […]

Hard stuff!

When Al Feguson stopped by the other night, he was treated to a view of the locomotive without its tender tank (and associated weight), and with the cab roof off and a piece of tungsten sticking out. The extra weight really helps, but it’s not satisfying to have it sticking out like that. So, I […]

Thanks for Stopping by, Al

Al Fergsuon, of Black Cat Publishing gave me a lift home on Sunday night after the train show (the team put on a super show again this year, thanks for organizing it). Thanks again, Al! On the way, he asked for a precis of my clinic, and to make a long story short, I invited […]

Sorted: Engine House Switch

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, there are a number of things that need to be resolved before I’ll be anywhere near satisfied with operations on Pembroke. I find it rewarding to share progress, and every little bit of motivation helps when you’ve got a job you’d rather not do. So, I’ll apologize […]

Trains 2014, Burnaby November 7-9

I just uploaded my slides to slideshare for my clinic at this weekend’s train show. It is a progress report on the layout, and so, I’m going to share it here as well. I’m presenting on Sunday at 11:30, opposite Mark Dance, who is certainly going to be more interesting and probably more entertaining. I’d […]

Staging Yard Glued Down and Connected

Gotta love those Kiwis and their invention of Daylight Savings Time. Name one other thing that was invented in New Zealand. I know I can’t. Anyway, thanks to them, we have one night a year when we get an extra hour of train time! This year, I used the time to glue down most of […]

Running Repairs

One of the reasons you’ve not yet seen any videos of trains running on Pembroke is that I’ve been unhappy with the way the 4-4-0 was behaving (the other is that I find editing videos is way harder than typing a few words). It has sat in a box for several years awaiting rails to […]

My Railfan Five

Chris Mears challenged me to the Railfan Five this evening. As I mentioned in my reply to his post, I don’t regard myself as much of a railfan (who has time to wait for trains?), and so, I don’t have all that many railfan photos. However, here are some that I like, in no particular […]

Why Pembroke?

I suppose, given the recent conversation, I should come clean and explain why I am modelling Pembroke. My interest in the Canada Atlantic Railway started in my late teens. I was certainly influenced by Niall MacKay’s excellent book, “Over the Hills to Georgian Bay.” But, if I am honest, I was thinking at the time […]

Why do we do the things we do?

When Ron Keith sought me out at the train show in Burnaby in November 2012, the doctors were giving him until Christmas to live. Ron wanted to give me a plow that he had built from a photograph I had given him more than a decade before. A couple of weeks later, I was at […]