All the parts that are fit to print

I’m just about ready to upload all the printed parts to Shapeways. To support some of the more delicate parts for printing, and more importantly for shipping, I added some sprues. I actually started out making a sprue for all the parts, but then I re-read the pricing guidelines for Shapeways and concluded that this […]

Just about finished drawing #622

Tonight as I was drawing the step that the fireman would use to light the headlight (imagine that at night at -30 Celsius!), I thought I must be just about finished with the drawing. So, I dropped all the parts into an OnShape assembly to see what is yet to be drawn. I discovered the […]

Mud drum plug

The erection drawing for this engine clearly shows a mud drum hanging like a uvula from the bottom of the boiler. Extending from this appendage, the drawing also shows a two-foot lever. This puzzled me for quite a while: surely you would have to unbolt the cover to gain access, and a lever wouldn’t be […]

Boiler keyhole?

Okay, it may be time to admit I have a keyhole problem. Ever since watching Dan Gelbart’s videos on prototyping, I’ve been thinking about them. This latest design element might be a keyhole too far. What if, instead of screwing down through the smoke stack to hold the front of the boiler in place, I […]

Flood update – Game On!

Wow, construction sure goes a lot faster when teams of professionals show up and work all day, rather than a lone amateur burning the midnight oil! Today, all the cabinets in the train room were reinstalled. So, this weekend we can excavate Mt Flood and get some tools out. As we say in street hockey: […]

Update on the Flood

I was overwhelmed by the number of people curious about the state of our basement recovery at the Railway Modellers Meet last weekend. Today we made some serious progress, when Matt, the conscientious floor installer put most of the subfloor down. Like every other worker who has come to our rescue, Matt took one look […]

Conformity and the NMRA

From the first time I entered an NMRA model contest, back in 1994, I have had a challenge with the Conformity section. How did a freelanced model earn full points while my prototype model did not? It didn’t take long at that first convention to fall in with Richard Hendrickson and the Prototype Modeller crowd. […]

Infographic for Railway Modellers’ Meet

This weekend is the third annual Railway Modellers’ Meet up at Simon Fraser University. I always like to bring something to display, but this year, most everything is buried in Mt Flood. So, apart from a whole lot of computer drawings, all I have are the two proofs of concept for the frame. In other […]

Lance Mindheim on Time

A great post on Lance Mindheim’s site caught my attention at lunch today. Here is the critical idea, but you should read the whole post: The hallmark of a good design? It’s pretty basic when you step back and think about it. A “successful design” is one that results in a model railroad that produces […]

To pivot or persevere…

Mark Dance made a great observation on the previous post: Pivot towards something that looks more promising when your existing path is not successful and your rate of learning on it is slowing down. Of course, you don’t know if your rate of learning is decreasing until you have three attempts. As my mother used […]