North Section Track

The track on the North Section is finally complete. The elapsed time was longer than the south section, but that was due to real life getting in the way of the trains. Overall, I think the effort was less for this section than the first. Compared to the south section, I made a couple of […]

My first video – fixing a frog

Some things are harder to explain in words than to show. So, I thought I would try shooting a video instead. Let me first tip my hat to people like Greg Amer, who have produced instructional videos on modeling topics. Even with the minimal editing I did, the work involved is tremendous compared to a […]

Progress at end of October

Keeping the year-end BHAG in mind, I wanted to complete track-laying on the north section before the end of October. Saturday was October 33rd, and I made a last-ditch effort to get it done. When the dust settled around three in the morning, the clocks had retreated an hour (bonus!), and I had all the […]

North Section Ballast – One Step Forward?

I didn’t quite get to the point where the Posse could start laying rail when they (in the form of Andrew, Julian being in transit, Jim being MIA and Chris being a thespian) descended upon my garage last night. Even so, we did have a productive evening of ballasting. The reason why I didn’t quite […]

Switch Rods

I wrote before about my dislike of just about all the switch rods I’ve ever seen on model railways (including my own). The standard PC board has two things wrong with it. First, it usually doesn’t look much like the prototype, which is typically made of a flat steel bar a couple of inches wide […]

Finished Points on South Section

Just in case you begin to believe that energy on Pembroke has been diverted to Brio-Pembroke, I did actually finish installing the points on the south section of Proto:87-Pembroke last week. Each of the points needed only a little bit of judicious filing before it would sit perfectly against its stock rail and the test […]

Wiring up the South Section

Tonight I soldered all the feeders to the bus wires. The frog feeders are still hanging loose, but all those stock rails are fed now. It is singularly uninteresting from a visual standpoint, and the photo came out blurry; so the photo below shows something else. Working from above, it has been easy to forget […]

Fixed Rails Finished on South Section

Tonight I dropped the last section of rail onto the Lee Manufacturing siding and declared the track laying done, except the points on the south section. Interestingly, this was the first time I used one of the Proto:87 Stores rail joiners, all the other rails on this section being only one length long for now. […]

Progress at end of September

It’s September 32nd, by my reckoning. So how am I doing against the Big Hairy Audacious Goal? One month in, and I think I’m about a week behind schedule. For those of you who are no better at math than I am at reading a calendar, that’s 25% behind schedule. At this rate, I’ll have […]

Ties and Ballast

As they say in another hobby, it’s time to fish or cut bait. So, this week I put away the test track and went for broke on the south module. I also happily discovered that October is still more than a week away, and I may still accomplish my goal for the month. I first […]