The Engine House Lead

The Proto:87 Posse rode to my place last night in the form of a visit from Andrew. As I mentioned, I’m eager to get back to the layout now that I know what I’m doing with track construction. So, we cleared off the door that is still awaiting installation in the laundry room, and plunked […]

Ballast Tests

The Canada Atlantic was ballasted with gravel quarried from various pits along the line, as were most railways of that period. So, it should be a simple matter to simply dig up some dirt from the right of way or from one of the quarries, sift out the big chunks and glue it down. Unfortunately […]

Tie Colour

Now we come to one of those great challenges with modelling the turn of the century: colour. In particular, since we’ve been talking about track, what colour should the ties be? The ties on the Canada Atlantic were almost certainly untreated, as preservatives for ties were something of a research topic, and the CA enjoyed […]

Track Details

There is a reason why William Cornelius Van Horne paid thousands of navvies to lay the CPR: it is remarkably tedious work! I mean, really, four spikes for every tie! Is it really necessary? Tonight I shook the frets out of the Proto:87 Stores packaging and tried out some of their joint bars and spikes. […]

Test Switch

It’s become fashionable to call the throw bar of a switch by its proper name: switch rod. Now, I’m all for using the correct terminology, but it seems to me that calling the giant chunk of PC board that keeps model switch points the correct distance apart gives these abominations more credit than they deserve. […]

Test Turnout 2

We left off last week with the straight(ish) stock rail in place, congratulating ourselves on a good evening’s work, considering we started with bare plywood. This week, we got through most of the rest of the engineering, with the exception of the switch rods. I hope to get those and the remaining details done by […]

Half a Test Turnout

You’d be excused to think that it’s a little late to go testing my planned turnout construction. But well, I’m changing it up yet again on this layout, and the Proto:87 posse was in danger of passing me. So, we raced ahead with everything else before finalizing construction techniques. If it doesn’t work out, I […]

Engine House Grounds

One of the challenges with building Pembroke in a house that is still under renovation is that some of my research material is buried. While the basement has been largely finished since before Christmas — don’t ask me about baseboards and that closet door — there are still shelves and various cabinets to construct. So, […]

The Tie Jig

This week, the posse consisted of just Jim and myself; Julian being stuck down a hole somewhere, and Andrew being off chasing the ghost of the Northern Pacific. Between this and a previous session with Andrew, we have most of the ties laid. The trick to placing ties quickly and accurately is a tie jig, […]

Turnout Ties

This week, after a short hiatus to visit my family, I’m doing more figuring on how a Canada Atlantic turnout must have looked. “What, can’t we just pull some standard drawings from the AREA and use those?” I hear you asking. Well, no, we can’t and for that reason, we also can’t use the excellent […]