Cricut – a new tool in the workshop

Happy Christmas to one and all! I hope Santa was nice to you. Here in North Vancouver, he didn’t disappoint: I found a Cricut Explore Air under our tree! Well, actually not under the tree, per se, because it didn’t fit, but it was in the vicinity and it had my name on it. The […]

Tuning #10: the point of no return

Oh, boy, what am I doing? I’ve decided that #10 wants more weight. If Pembroke were flat as a pool table, I could probably get away with it the way it is. However, I wound up building the station tracks on a slight grade, as the prototype was. The unfortunate result is that this little […]

Turntable Video Posted

Okay, you asked for it! Here is the video showing the operation of the Pembroke turntable. I looked for appropriate turn of the century background music, I really did, but this was the best I could find.

New throttle for Pembroke

Thanks to my friend, Brian Pate, who recently decommissioned his fabulous Klondike Mines Railway, I found myself in possession of a CVP ALR900 radio receiver and a clutch of T5000 throttles. Having only one engine in steam, I passed most of the throttles over to another friend, Scott Calvert, and kept only one. It has […]

No more double standard

Chris Mears kicked off an interesting discussion over on his blog back in October. Through a series of posts, he has been analyzing his desires with respect to the hobby. It seems to have gone quiet over there, but one post in particular struck a chord with me. If it is to be placed in a […]

Turntable operational at last!

It’s been eleven months and 76 blog posts, but Pembroke at last has an operational turntable! It has been quite a journey, to say the least. There is a step up onto the turntable on the side that had the great MDF debacle; I’m hoping it will not need shimming, but I will reserve judgement […]

Turntable lock: Rube would be proud

It’s been a bit of a battle, but I think I finally have the turntable lock control finished. The original plan called for a flexible shaft to drive the pin into the sockets around the turntable edge. However, when push came to shove (so to speak), I found that the shaft had to flex too […]

Turntable Crank

November is always a slow month for the trains in our house. It’s getting close to Christmas, and for the past eleven years, I’ve given photobooks that summarize the past year of the kids’ lives to all our family. I spend most of the month, therefore, editing and curating photos. Anyway, this morning, while the […]

4-4-0 Engine truck designs

You can tell I’m getting excited about a project when I start planning for it before the previous project is even complete. Oh, this will make it difficult to keep momentum on the turntable. This weekend we were over to Nanaimo for dinner with family, and so, I couldn’t really make progress on the turntable […]

Blackout Modelling

We had a good old blow this evening, which made cycling across the Lions Gate Bridge very interesting indeed and also knocked the power out. My Christmas project, which is consuming most of my spare time these days and seriously hampering progress on the layout, requires a computer and Internet. So, I took some […]