Impending operations

Now that I have Percy operational, and most of the turnout controls are in, I am starting to turn my thoughts once again to operations. The layout doesn’t operate well enough to share it with others yet, so Marc Simpson is in no danger of losing the bet. However, it won’t get any better if […]

Turnout controls installed just in time

With the Railway Modellers’ Meet descending on Pembroke next weekend, I have installed the turnout controls just in time. I still need to paint the rods on which the handles pivot, but that is cosmetic and might wait until after the guests have left. The controls almost meet my vision, but they need some gap […]

Ten handles

The handles for the turnout controls need to be strong enough to handle. So, rather than printing them, I fabricated them from brass. This was one of the many times I’m happy to have a small layout. Ten was just enough: any more would have been tedious.

Railway Modellers’ Meet Clinic

After several years of trying, the Railway Modellers’ Meet finally accepted one of my clinic proposals. On Thursday, I delivered Reinventing Wheels: A Pembroke Update to a packed Zoom room. The title was a nod to Mark Dance, who once noted that if there is a more difficult way to do something, I will find […]

Fiddling the shelf

“Sounds fiddly,” my darling wife said when she heard the plan to fill the space between turnout controls with half-inch channel. Boy, did she get that right! Despite the provision of recesses on the sides of the turnout controls allowing for 1/16″ of overlap, every single piece – there are ten so far – needed […]

Percy visits the paint shop

I found only the dried out dregs of a bottle of paint when I went to paint Percy’s new parts. The dregs looked almost viable, and I wanted the project done so I pressed forward with thinning and spraying. It was one of the worst airbrush experiences of my life. That’s saying something as my […]

Shelf mockup

My darling wife kindly pointed out that the turnout controls I installed earlier this month are ugly. Now, they should almost disappear once painted black, but in keeping with my learning about Art Nouveau, I also designed them to flow into a half-inch decorative shelf that will extend most of the length of the layout. […]

The Railway Modellers come to Pembroke

The Railway Modellers’ Meet was one of the first to meets to forge ahead in a virtual format amongst all the cancellations of 2020, and I dare say we have virtual meets increasingly dialed in. The virtual format suits the British Columbian geography. Sparsely perched on the far edge of the continent, for many of […]

Last train on the Columbia and Western

I had the great privilege to be invited to Mark Dance’s Columbia and Western for one last run before he tears it out and crates it up for its new life in Edmonton. We ran some trains (including, at 47 cars, the longest ever on the railroad), had some snacks and Mark gave each of […]

In pursuit of one great model

Over on Model Airplane Maker, there is a beautiful post recollecting an old friend and hobby store owner who offered that everyone has one great model in them. It’s a well-written post with lots of photos of beautiful models; you should read it then come back here. In a model railroading context, the idea of […]