The story of Canada Atlantic flat cars

I have been thainking that I need a side project while completing the heavy shop. Most nights, I’m not able to make progress on the woodworking as it’s too late to run the table saw. Casting about for a little diversion, I thought about making some flat cars. The first step is to get the […]

The madness of Chester Machniewski

What an enormous pleasure it was to meet Chester Machniewski today! Here is a man whose welcome and smile were eclipsed only by his fanaticism for model trains. Lots of people have passions, but few take them to Chester’s affectation. As far as I could tell, he does nothing on a small scale. Need a […]

Operations ideas from BC Hydro

My friend, Colin Dover, intimated to me last night that he builds layouts purely so he can have a place to switch. A couple of years ago, he tore out his representation of Vancouver Waterfront to build his “much simpler” Central Park line of BC Hydro. I put “much simpler” in quotes because, well, it […]

The heavy shop takes shape

When I asked my wife what she thought of the new workshop cabinet, she said it looks “workshoppy.” Okay, I’ll admit, the joinery is not as nice as I would like, but you’ve gotta love those 4″ deep drawers, and the big cavern behind those doors is sized for a future Sherline mill. I’m also […]

The Art of X-Ray Reading

I picked up Roy Peter Clark’s The Art of X-Ray Reading at Mosaic Books in Kelowna last weekend. While the book seems tailored more to writers of fiction, I read it mainly to improve my railroad writing. There are so many suggestions in the book that even if I ignore the ones about naming characters […]

A Peculiar layout?

The kids and I have been reading a wonderful pair of books by Stefan Bachmann. The Peculiar and The Whatnot are set in a version of Victorian England on the cusp of war with faeries from an alternate world. It’s an evocative steam punk vision of technology diverted from steam-power to magical-power. A grimy, gritty […]

Paint booth installed

Anyone who owns their home will be familiar with the way jobs stack. You just want to change one little thing, but before you can do that, you must move that other thing, and replace the bit there. Before you know it, fixing a light bulb has turned into replacing the drain tile. So it […]

Paint booth turntable

I seem to spend a lot of my time making turntables. Given the amount of stress I feel when I fire up the air brush, I’ll take anything that helps. I left a hole in the fold-down leaf for the spray booth to allow for a zero-height lazy Susan that’s sure to make painting more […]

The new Proto87.org

I just finished updating the proto87.org website, moving it over to WordPress so that someone else looks after concerns such as keeping the server up-to-date and secure. It’s been so long that I posted there that I’d forgotten about the blog completely! There are a few topics that may be of interest to readers […]

Test fitting the spray booth

It seems a hundred years ago that I bought that range hood for a deep discount at Rona. It sat for all those years beneath the pile of junk in the heavy shop, awaiting its moment to be installed. I’d bought it early so I could be sure of the vent location, and it seems […]