Liquitex Spray on the Muskrat River

After five coats of paint or primer, filling and sanding in between, I finally felt ready to place the finish coats. These are all going to be sprayed in the hopes that I don’t have to sand between coats (time will tell). My darling wife looked at the river and declared that it was too […]

Replacing Sketchup

I finally gave up on Windows. Oh, I’m no anti-Windows bigot (at least not anymore): I am very productive on the platform we all love to hate. The problem was that the laptop forgot its license key, and due to poor record-keeping, so did everyone else. To make a long story short, I downloaded Ubuntu and have […]

Muskrat River is Nearly Flat

I had truly expected to be finished that first pass on the scenery by the weekend. However, getting the Muskrat River to lose its semblance to plywood has taken more work than I had anticipated. We’re now at two layers of primer and two layers of paint, filling and sanding between each coat, as well […]

Roundhouse Sheathing

I’m starting to think about modelling the roundhouse, with a view to taking it to the PNR regional meet in Salmon Arm in a month and a half (!). From Del Rosamond’s notes, we know that it had “Colonial Siding,” which was apparently similar to clapboard siding, but with full-thickness boards. Clapboards are tapered. Now […]

Pembroke Potato Fields

One of the benefits of modelling a prototype location is that you don’t have to make it up. Until David Estabrooks’s recent posting to Facebook, I was expecting that the land to the south of Alfred Street was bush. However, we can clearly see that there was a field of vegetables, and from the spacing, potatoes seem […]

Colour of the steam age

My cousin Tracey is a fascinating individual. Endlessly curious, inventive and energetic, she is a trove of ideas and discoveries. Knowing that I am interested in the turn of the century, she once mentioned that she had discovered a book of colour photographs taken of Russia before the First World War. Sadly, she couldn’t recall anything […]

Game Face

My friend, Scott Calvert emailed some photos that he took of last month’s operating session on his Boundary Sub. I was struck by the studied concentration on Chuck, Bill and Colin’s faces as they switch the yard at Nelson above. I especially love this one of Brian Pate, assuming his classic pose while running the […]

Pembroke South Stacked

Pembroke starts to peter out as we move further south. By the time we get to Lee Manufacturing at the south extremity of the layout, houses have disappeared, to be replaced by potato fields and pastures. Aside from the factory and a cattle pen, the only structures belong to the roundhouse. The Mary Street bridge, […]

Ghost Buildings Come to Pembroke

Last night I put the last of the roofs on what model railroaders call building mockups. I think architects would call these white foam core boxes “massing models.” As with an architect, they enable me to study the shapes from various angles. I may colour them with soft pastels at some point, but right now […]

Wither Proto:87?

A couple of weeks ago, Chris Mears pointed out a couple of Proto:87 threads and stories about Proto:87. Of course that really perked my ears up, but unfortunately, between work and other things I really haven’t had time to respond. One of the threads that Chris pointed out was on rmweb, and related to the […]