1000 Posts on Pembroke87

I just received a notification that this week’s inauspicious post about repairing the turntable was the 1000th post to this blog. Knowing they’re just trying to gamify their platform, I usually ignore such notifications, but 1000 seems like a good moment to reflect back on the embarrassingly long time I’ve been writing about the challenges […]

Kickstarting Group

Summer is always a busy time, and with the good weather, my thoughts turn to outside activities. It’s difficult to keep momentum on the railroad through July and August, and I can imagine arriving in September or October to find all my projects locked in a thick layer of moss. So the call for the […]

Peopling Pembroke

Figures present a contentious subject for model railroaders. Some of us enjoy creating stories and cameos with groups of figures frozen in mid-swing or suspended between strides. Others prefer their figures in static poses so their lack of animation is less obvious. There are layouts teeming like the sidewalks of Manhattan and layouts as lonely […]

The Effect of Detail

This morning The Algorithm pushed Stephen Travers Art at me, and because it is New Year’s Day and I have nothing better to do, except consume the remaining Christmas treats, take down the tree, put away the decorations, and a million other things, I clicked through to the suggested video to learn something while I […]

Realistic Layout Operation

My old friend Tony Thompson has started a mini series of blog posts on Realistic Layout Operation. As always, Tony is a thoughtful person, who probably has more model railroad operating experience than anyone I know. The first post in the series surprised me, but I’m not going to precis it; you should read it […]

The Changing Landscape of Ontario

The Girl and I are travelling around Ontario this week, looking at universities. On the long drive from Ottawa to Fake London, there was ample time to ponder how the landscape has changed, even over my lifetime, and the implications to modelling Pembroke in 1905. The most alarming change has occurred in the past ten […]

Subjective realism versus Slavish Adherence

Model Railway Journal 303 finally arrived at the local newsagent, an ocean and a continent away from its presses. Even though I have no intention of ever modelling the railways of Britain, I find this magazine inspirational, informative and sometimes thought-provoking. Jerry Clifford’s editorial in issue 303 was in the latter category. He sums up […]

Pembroke Snacks

Pembroke is set in 1905, and so that number tends to leap out at me whenever I see it. These cookies, introduced by Leclerc sometime before Christmas, caught my eye, and I finally bought a box this week. I wonder what kind of research Leclerc did before slapping the 1905 label on them? I imagine […]

But is it a Model Railroad?

Back when I lived in Ottawa, the Ottawa Valley Associated Railroaders (OVAR) organized a day trip to a couple of layouts in Montreal; on the way home, the bus stopped at a McDonalds, which happened to be alongside some tracks. Somewhere between the delight of licking Big Mac sauce from our upper lips and the […]

The Opera of Railway Modelling

In Italian, the word “opera” means simply “work,” but to us English, it refers to a piece of art where robustly-sized talents exercise their robustly-sized lungs in a language we don’t understand. “Opera” the base for the model railroad jargon, “operations,” and as we consider our audiences’ responses to our layouts, the operator is one […]