Heel Joint Resolution

I gave the styrene bits a good try, but in the end, there wasn’t enough material to hold onto with adhesive, and it didn’t work. Fortunately, disassembling the switch was straightforward, and I was able to adopt the better alternative with .01″x.025″x7mm “joint bars” soldered to the either side of the point, and slipped over […]

Point Hinge Ideas

If I’m honest with myself, I shouldn’t be surprised by a derailment at the heal of a switch. The hinge, based on the clever but fine rail joiner from proto87.com, was the most expedient solution to an age-old model railroad problem that I could think of when I was laying track. Considering this problem of […]

One small step…

I’ve spent a couple of days now puzzling over a derailment at the south end of the siding. The gauge is fine, almost too wide, and there is only the tiniest unevenness to the track. Then I got the phone out and shot a video on the far side, and the problem was immediately apparent. […]

1120 Gets a new Decoder

Open house mania is not finished as I’m expecting another visitor in just over a week. So, I’m wasting as little time as possible in getting 1120 running again. The new connectors arrived from Mouser almost overnight, and I drove out to the Far East to pick up a LokSound 5 decoder from Intercity Trains […]

Bachmann Connectors

If there is one good thing about the decoder in 1120’s tender blowing up right in front of Steve Stark’s eyes, which he brought all the way from Victoria so he could point them at Pembroke, it is that I get to replace the six wires between tender and engine. They may be 28- or […]

The Stock Spur

With the PNR regional meet bearing down on me, and needing to get the roundhouse back in its seat, I was feeling pressure to finish the stock spur while it was still convenient. So, between coats of paint on the outside of the house, I bent some lengths of rail, and soldered feeders to their […]

Engine sand

Even today, locomotives want a small amount of dry sand for traction. All my resources are tacit about where they kept engine sand in Pembroke in 1905. There is also zero information about the purpose of the third stall in the roundhouse. For years, I’ve thought there was probably a pile of sand somewhere and […]

Concurrent projects

Days to go until the big train meet and I have a crash of concurrent projects consuming space in my office. On the left we have the roundhouse with its new floor receiving some repairs. In the distance, the track crew, who also happen to be the roundhouse repair crew, are working on fixing a […]

Last puzzle pieces

I don’t recall why a former me decided to leave the stock spur as a short stub. I’m sure it seemed reasonable at the time. Maybe I planned to build a stock pen together with the spur. In any event that part of the layout has been a piece of 12 mm foam core for […]

Roundhouse Gets a New Floor

I’ve never been happy with the roundhouse floor. Being made from a thick layer of ballast, it was not flat, and some of the rocks were real ankle-turners. As a result, details like work benches and water barrels were crooked. As I had the roundhouse module off the layout to protect it while working on […]