Who put all that stuff in the TRAIN room?

On Wednesday, I took a reprieve from working in the evening (which is how I’ve spent most of January) to take in a work session chez my friend Scott Calvert. He indicated I should bring my soldering iron. When I went to retrieve it, I found an impassible pile of detritus in front of my desk. The […]

A note to whoever uninstalls Pembroke

Dear future self; One day when you go to take Pembroke out, the north section can be removed with just the screws into the wall and the cabinets. They’re all accessible from beneath. All except this one screw at the end of the Pembroke Milling Company siding, which goes straight into the windowsill. You’ll probably […]

The Basket Case of Pembroke Hill

Of course the vertical transition curve at the top of the hill in Pembroke had to include a turnout. So I wasn’t surprised when the dust settled after the Battle of Pembroke Hill to find that removing this transition had transformed the turnout into a bit of a basket case. I was, however, surprised by […]

The Battle of Pembroke Hill

Well, I won’t say it was easy, but I believe I’ve managed to get the roadbed pretty flat through the north end of Pembroke. As I mentioned, the roadbed was glued and screwed (from above) onto the benchwork, and the screws particularly made the work tough. I also found that the contortions I had to […]

Flattening out Pembroke

After all that work on #10, she can now stomp out of town with her passengers in tow. Unfortunately, when she gets back in to the station, the physics of backing back out of the station are too much for her, and she slips her drivers. The real yard at Pembroke was on a gentle […]

Before you can program a decoder…

Now that #10 seems to be running as well as I can make it mechanically, it’s time to stop running it under address 3. Okay, where’s the programming track? The truth is, there isn’t one yet. Being in a bit of a rush to make things run, and because it’s a little inconvenient to access […]

Revisiting the Light Wash

Eighteen months ago, Andrew and I ran some experiments to see if I could improve the effect of light washing up the backdrop. I was disappointed with the result, being too subtle to simulate sunrise or sunset. I was pretty much ready to replace the RGB strips with a simple white strip. This week, I […]

Turntable operational at last!

It’s been eleven months and 76 blog posts, but Pembroke at last has an operational turntable! It has been quite a journey, to say the least. There is a step up onto the turntable on the side that had the great MDF debacle; I’m hoping it will not need shimming, but I will reserve judgement […]

Turntable lock: Rube would be proud

It’s been a bit of a battle, but I think I finally have the turntable lock control finished. The original plan called for a flexible shaft to drive the pin into the sockets around the turntable edge. However, when push came to shove (so to speak), I found that the shaft had to flex too […]

Turntable Crank

November is always a slow month for the trains in our house. It’s getting close to Christmas, and for the past eleven years, I’ve given photobooks that summarize the past year of the kids’ lives to all our family. I spend most of the month, therefore, editing and curating photos. Anyway, this morning, while the […]