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 […]

Ballast Frustration

Ballasting track is a well-known method for stopping it from working any longer. Most of the track on Pembroke was ballasted before any rail went down. The exception was the parts that are most likely to fail after ballasting – turnouts, specifically the switch. Knowing the risks I faced, I took it slow and only […]

The Spike Extruder

Even a small layout like Pembroke has surprising number of ties, and each of those ties takes one to four spikes. That leads to an alarming number of spikes. Allow me to demonstrate with a little mental arithmetic. Pembroke is about 16 feet long, but most of it is two tracks wide. So it’s really […]

Frog Jewelry

When I first laid the track for Pembroke, I left the detail off until it was running the way I wanted. That day is getting near. There are a few persistent derailments, but I’m getting better and better at fixing them. So, the southern-most two turnouts are starting to get dolled up. In my previous […]

Spike Options

The photo of the wire fencing last week demonstrated to me that there is no avoiding the need for spikes holding the rail to the ties. Without them, and with no tie plates (as is appropriate for 1905), the rails look nude. I’ve made spikes two ways in the years I’ve been at this. Back […]

Turnout Details

Who even remembers what I was thinking back in the day when I laid these turnouts? I unfortunately wrote little on the plans for detailing the turnouts back when I was designing and installing them in 2013. There is one note on tie placement, and that’s about all I could find, other than a ridiculous […]

Mystery Derailment

I’ve been chasing derailments lately, and making steady progress until I came up against this one on the Pembroke Milling Company switch. Here the first truck of 1120’s tender consistently chooses the diverging path, rather than the normal route. Interestingly, this has been only happening for about a year. Prior to that, northbound trains arrived […]

Heel Joint Resolution

I gave the styrene bits a good try, but in the end, there wasn’t enough material to hold onto with adhesive, and it didn’t work. Fortunately, disassembling the switch was straightforward, and I was able to adopt the better alternative with .01″x.025″x7mm “joint bars” soldered to the either side of the point, and slipped over […]

Point Hinge Ideas

If I’m honest with myself, I shouldn’t be surprised by a derailment at the heal of a switch. The hinge, based on the clever but fine rail joiner from proto87.com, was the most expedient solution to an age-old model railroad problem that I could think of when I was laying track. Considering this problem of […]

One small step…

I’ve spent a couple of days now puzzling over a derailment at the south end of the siding. The gauge is fine, almost too wide, and there is only the tiniest unevenness to the track. Then I got the phone out and shot a video on the far side, and the problem was immediately apparent. […]