Water Tank Speaker

I’m still grappling with the electronics aspect of the water tank. The two switches are no longer a problem, but now the MP3 player stops all processing when the volume changes. I’m sure I’ll get past this one too: it’s just a matter of experimenting and probably more soldering and unsoldering. In the meantime, here […]

Back to the Breadboard

So, it turns out there’s such a thing as a pull-up resistor that pulls a pin away from ground so that when the pin is shorted to ground using, say a micro-switch connected to a valve rope on a water tower, the microcontroller can detect the change. Without the pull-up resistor, the input is said […]

Tender Truck Proof of Concept

The first print was too tight, and the second print was too loose. The third print was just right! So after playing with the action for a few days and showing it to my friends, I soldered some .010″ phosphor-bronze wire to some custom-made brass tube bearings, and assembled the truck. Honestly, it could roll […]

Productive Group Modelling Night

For about a year, the local NMRA division has hosted a group modelling evening. Despite it being only ten minutes’ drive for me, my calendar never seemed to line up. This Friday I finally made it. I brought along the soldering iron and the project board for the water tower, and wound up wishing I’d […]

Are New Trucks the Answer?

The resolution of the mystery derailment at turnout 5 continues to elude me. I’ve spent hours watching that leading wheel of the tender truck kissing the rail and floating off at the critical point. The more I watched it, I became less and less convinced that it was ever in proper contact with the rail. […]

Mystery Derailment

I’ve been chasing derailments lately, and making steady progress until I came up against this one on the Pembroke Milling Company switch. Here the first truck of 1120’s tender consistently chooses the diverging path, rather than the normal route. Interestingly, this has been only happening for about a year. Prior to that, northbound trains arrived […]

Ontario Meadows and Fields

The land around Pembroke was settled about sixty years prior to 1905, and before that, it would have been forest. So a cleared area would not have been allowed to go fallow unless it were unproductive. Meadows are a recent addition to the Ontario landscape. Having said that, there is space in front of the […]

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 […]

Water Tower Circuit

The breadboard for the water tower has sat on my desk long enough that it finally transcribed itself into a diagram to start making the circuit permanent. Despite the apparent complexity, it is in fact just four simple circuits mediated by software in the microcontroller: I’m certain this could all be achieved with hardware, but […]

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 […]