Fence Rails for the Hay Field

The fence separating the two fields will be about 70 cm long, and will consume a small mountain of scale logs. I made the logs from bamboo skewers by first cutting the skewers into 12 scale foot lengths with some side-cutters, then splitting those lengths into at least six pieces with a utility knife. It’s […]

Fencing in or Fencing Out?

The area I’ve been calling the hay field, it turns out, is too large for one of the Silflor grass mats that I’ve been storing for over twenty years. I have two, and so there will now two fields, and I’m hoping one can be convinced to become wheat. Then the question came up: should […]

Ballast Frustration

Ballasting track is a well-known method for stopping it from working any longer. Most of the track on Pembroke was ballasted before any rail went down. The exception was the parts that are most likely to fail after ballasting – turnouts, specifically the switch. Knowing the risks I faced, I took it slow and only […]

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 […]

Sticky, Silly Short

Of course it happened when I had a visitor. The train had set off from Golden Lake, and was triumphantly passing the Pembroke freight shed, having stayed obediently on the track for the whole run. But when it stopped short, no amount of cajoling would move it. I finally looked at the command station, and […]

Wet Palettes Transform Acrylic Painting

The loss of model railroad paint manufacturers like Floquil may actually be one of the best things to happen to this hobby. When our crusty bottles of Grimy Black and Boxcar Red ran dry, the creaking was almost audible as we collectively raised our heads to see how other modellers coloured their miniatures. We found […]

AI and Model Railroading

When, after two years of social distancing, the Railway Modellers’ Meet met in person in 2022, all the clinics were online. That meant that the in-person part was only one day long, and consisted of on-the-spot content. We stole the idea of Birds of a Feather from technical unconferences, and have kept a slot like […]

Good Fences Make Good Neighbours on Pembroke

…There where it is we do not need the wall:He is all pine and I am apple orchard.My apple trees will never get acrossAnd eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’… Mending Wall, by Robert Frost Behind the engine shed on Pembroke, the fence separates track […]

Pembroke Hay Field No Good for Tea

The area inside the corner at the south end of the layout was originally conceived as “the place to put your tea.” The idea was unpopular with the real model railroaders out there who universally proclaimed food and beverages should not be on the layout. Nobody would listen to my protests that “the place to […]