Momentum

I didn’t realize it at the time, but the worst thing about the great flood of 2018 was that it completely destroyed my momentum. At the end of January, I had finally arrived at a place where I thought I might be able to cut Proto:87 wheels for #622. I had even cleaned the lathe […]

Inspiration for the spaces between

My recollection of August in Ontario is of a landscape weary of the summer’s heat and sun, but desperate to hold on rather than giving in to the autumn that is just around the corner. I remember the seed heads of ochre grass bobbing against my thighs as they launched grasshoppers whose wings flashed briefly […]

Treasure at the Winnipeg Railway Museum

The day after our trip on the Prairie Dog Central, I carved half an hour out of the family vacation to visit the Countess of Dufferin at the Winnipeg Railway Museum. This venerable old engine is the one that I could find that has a mud drum, and she was going to help me with […]

Canada Atlantic Simulator

Last weekend, the kids and I had an opportunity to ride the Prairie Dog Central, near Winnipeg. This superb tourist operation is home to Canada’s oldest locomotive, an 1882 4-4-0. That in itself is remarkable, but the PDC has gone a step further in assembling an authentic early 20th Century train to go with it. […]

Frame pattern for 622

Working fifteen minutes at a go, I’ve finally finished putting together the pattern for the thicker Nickel Silver sheet. I think if I’d been more cunning, I almost could have fit two whole models on there. As it is, there will be plenty of leftover etch and there are doubles of all the riskiest parts. […]

Photo studio gets a makeover

There is a silver lining when your basement gets flooded: you get to put everything back a little bit better. In the case of the photo studio, which resides behind the monitor in my home office under the layout, I had never liked having to move the monitor out of the way. First of all, […]

Mutually Assured Alignment

I’m telling you this because, in a few months, you might be me, and we will want to take advantage of some of the cunning plans that we laid in the summer. We’re going to attempt to fold the crossheads up from etched material. I’ve put four of them on the etch because there’s loads […]

Etching pattern begins

As I start work on the pattern for etching, there is good news and bad news. First the good news: it appears that OnShape have improved the compatibility with Inkscape, and so, now I can take flat patterns from OnShape and import them directly into Inkscape without traversing through QCadCam. Someone is still resizing the […]

Virtual dry fit for 622

In typical Panglossian fashion today, I uploaded the STL file for 622’s plastic parts to Shapeways. I might have hit the big “Print” button, if the bounding box hadn’t precluded the use of their highest resolution machine. It’s a good thing I didn’t because the pause gave me an opportunity to assemble all the parts […]

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 […]