Two down, sixteen to go

January second. The tree is on its way to the chipper, the gingerbread house is collapsed, and somehow we’ve found homes for most of the new toys and books. Most importantly, the guest room has been converted back into a train room and office; time to get back to business! As I’ve not come up […]

Roundhouse doors ready for hinges

The train room has converted into a guest room for the holidays. So progress is going to slow down for a bit. I had some pieces of roundhouse doors drying on the lights, which totally messes with the comfortable-yet-tidy ambience we’re aiming for in our guest room. So, while I should have been vacuuming, I […]

Roundhouse doors cut

I warmed up the Cricut for a little workout this evening, cutting out the doors for the roundhouse. The blade is not super-sharp, and two passes didn’t reliably cut through the 3-ply Strathmore on the “Iron On” setting. No matter, it was a few minutes’ work to chase all the cuts with an Olfa knife, […]

The roundhouse man door

My thanks to readers Shawn and Ben for applying their thoughts and experience to the enigma of the roundhouse man door. The question is, what is causing the shadow across the top of the man door? In the previous post I conjectured this shadow was because the man door was a sliding door behind the […]

Roundhouse doors drafted

Tonight I drew up the roundhouse doors, which have a pleasingly interesting pattern of cross-bracing. Some panels have an X, and others have a Z. The braces match a Mattingly photo, taken in the 50’s, but the reasons why these shapes were chosen are lost in time. My friend, Mike Chandler, who worked at servicing locomotives, conjectures that […]

More on driving doors

A couple of weeks ago, when introducing my clinic on the Cricut, my friend Mark Dance claimed that if there is a more complicated way to do something, I will surely attempt to do it. Apparently he knows me pretty well. I don’t know if that is altogether my choice, but the philosophy behind Pembroke […]

Roundhouse front wall

Progress on the railway always takes a bit of a dive in November as I focus on Christmas gifts. In stolen minutes since the Railway Modellers’ Meet, two weeks ago, I’ve managed to add the missing blocking and timbers to the front wall of the roundhouse. The pillars for roundhouse doors are generally very heavy, […]

Roundhouse arches

Information is a curse and a blessing. On the one hand, having real prototype information makes our models that much richer. On the other hand, once you have it, it cannot be ignored. In my case, Peter Newman shared a Del Rosamond photograph of the roundhouse after it had burned (unfortunately I don’t have permission to […]

Roundhouse studs

Today The Girl helped me cut the studs for the roundhouse walls. We used HO scale 4×6 – a little heavy, perhaps, but I felt it was worth having some extra bracing to hold up the card. I had originally thought I would use the stud assemblies that I cut with the Cricut, but inspired by yesterday’s post, […]

Roundhouse Walls go Up

While working on the Railway Modellers’ Meet last night, I almost finished placing the remaining walls. That back wall is going to be tricky and quite delicate while the model is under construction! At the end of the evening, I was sitting back, admiring the progress when I noticed that one of the back wall […]