Lettering Test

The thing about working on lettering is that there’s not much to show until it’s done. You spend hours squinting at photos, trying to decide if a circle is an oval, or if that’s just the angle, and even more hours deciding if it should be a hair skinnier or taller. Extra opinions help, and […]

Sky high flat cars

The trouble with building a batch is that when you make a mistake, you replicate the mistake for each member of the batch. So, despite passing Saturday morning enjoyably melting tiny pieces of plastic strip into globs that look passably like body bolsters, I now have three flat cars that all sit approximately .030″ (.75mm) […]

Colour separations

My cousin John is a year or so older than I am, and as a kid, I kind of looked up to him. Back then, kids built models the way they play video games today, and on one visit, John showed me a plane he was working on. I was astonished to see that the […]

Cricut lettering: time to admit defeat

I think I’ve taken Cricut masks beyond the tool’s limit. I can likely use the technique to make the large numbers, but the small (1.5mm/.06″) letters, “CANADA ATLANTIC” on the tank collar are simply too small for the knife-cut masks. The best I could achieve was with two masks – one for the largely vertical […]

Sneaking up on Cricut masks

As I thought about it, it seemed that the problem with the Cricut masks was that the vinyl material relaxed out of the grooves in the combine’s siding. Almost by the time I had finished thumb-nailing the mask down firmly, the other end had begun to lift out of the grooves. While the aero modellers […]

New shelves for the paint shop

Getting the raised floor for the paint shop opened opportunities for more storage. The wall opposite the spray booth contains the tank for a toilet, and so, it is built of 6″ studs. My plan is to fill in all the voids with shelves and storage. The first module, designed for spray cans and other […]

Let the sunshine in

Ever since trying out my office puck lights above the layout, I’ve been on the lookout for a suitable product for the layout itself. The ultra-slim LED lights from Globe have been calling to me from their shelf at Rona for a couple of months, and this weekend I finally caved in and picked one […]

Why do we do the things we do?

Nearly ten years ago, Ron Keith collared me at the local train show. What a wonderful gentleman he was, with his grey handlebar moustache and his enigmatic smile. I was happy to bask in his genial company once again. However, this time Ron had no time for small talk: “Rene, I’ve been looking all over […]

Learning Arduino

My brother, the same one who sent me a static grass applicator for Christmas, sent an Arduino starter kit for The Boy. Yeah, he kinda hit it out of the park this Yule. The Boy had a heavy first term at school, but now that exams are over he finally has some time to play […]

RGBW

I’ve never been happy with the wash of lights on the backdrop. Not only is the effect terminally subtle for sunrise and sunset, but when turned to bright daylight white, the colour is much too blue, especially when photographed. A short while ago, I found out that light strips are available in Red-Green-Blue and White. […]