2023 in Review

12 months have gone by in a heartbeat, but if I really pause to consider it, I’m pleased with the year’s results.

716 Mary gets a Porch

I’m almost inclined to call this little model finished, except I want to add some more details to liven up the porch. There is a shovel leaning against the corner and a jacket hung from a nail, but it still lacks something. The porch itself is a simple wood frame, planked with boards left over […]

The fourth audience

Gary Hinshaw pointed out that I’d missed an important fourth audience in my post about art and model railroading: the layout builder themself. How do they respond to the layout? To be sure, I have difficulty thinking of myself as the audience of my layout. I spend too much time behind the curtain to expect […]

Hilton’s Art

From the moment James Hilton announced his latest book, “The Art of Railway Modelling,” I knew a copy would take up residence on my bookshelf. In the buying frenzy of Black Friday, my mouse blundered onto the Titfield Thunderbolt page, and before I knew what was happening, it had completed checkout without any input from […]

622 all the photos

716 Mary Street Gets a Roof

Difficult as it may be to believe, I do not have to make everything myself. Once you get started, though, it feels easier to make stuff than it is to look for an appropriate product. So, I was thinking I would be making my own shingles for the little half-a-house that I’m calling 716 Mary […]

The more we made it boring…

In Hindsight 20/20 this morning, Matthieu Lachance, who presented an entertaining and of course beautiful clinic about his group’s modelling journey, dropped this amazing juxtaposition: “The more we made it boring, the more it stood out.” He went on to elaborate that people were excited by the mundane because they recognized it. This thought meshes […]

Coal Dock Done

The coal piles managed to find their way onto the dock, and on the right side of the dock, too. I’m declaring this model done and ready for installation on the layout. Unlike most of my models, I finished this one before it finished me!

The Pembroke Water Tower

Like the coal dock, we have precious little information about Pembroke’s water tower beyond a mention in the 1908 Grand Trunk Railway Bridges & Buildings book. Here we find that the town waterworks fed a 20,000 gallon tank that measured 13 feet by 12.5 feet in diameter. It had a 6″ drop pipe, a discharge […]

Coal bin almost binned

That was close! I almost made the coal piles on the wrong side of the coal dock.