Mystery Derailment

I’ve been chasing derailments lately, and making steady progress until I came up against this one on the Pembroke Milling Company switch. Here the first truck of 1120’s tender consistently chooses the diverging path, rather than the normal route. Interestingly, this has been only happening for about a year. Prior to that, northbound trains arrived […]

Ontario Meadows and Fields

The land around Pembroke was settled about sixty years prior to 1905, and before that, it would have been forest. So a cleared area would not have been allowed to go fallow unless it were unproductive. Meadows are a recent addition to the Ontario landscape. Having said that, there is space in front of the […]

The Changing Landscape of Ontario

The Girl and I are travelling around Ontario this week, looking at universities. On the long drive from Ottawa to Fake London, there was ample time to ponder how the landscape has changed, even over my lifetime, and the implications to modelling Pembroke in 1905. The most alarming change has occurred in the past ten […]

Water Tower Circuit

The breadboard for the water tower has sat on my desk long enough that it finally transcribed itself into a diagram to start making the circuit permanent. Despite the apparent complexity, it is in fact just four simple circuits mediated by software in the microcontroller: I’m certain this could all be achieved with hardware, but […]

Subjective realism versus Slavish Adherence

Model Railway Journal 303 finally arrived at the local newsagent, an ocean and a continent away from its presses. Even though I have no intention of ever modelling the railways of Britain, I find this magazine inspirational, informative and sometimes thought-provoking. Jerry Clifford’s editorial in issue 303 was in the latter category. He sums up […]

Water Tower Animation

The gubbins for the inside of the water tower have come together at last. Once the noise maker was working, it was a straightforward matter of programming to make it all work – at least in the unit and integration tests! When I went to upload it to the board, however, there were still some […]

Water Tower to get Noisy

After almost two weeks of avoiding manuals, while scanning blog posts and speed-watching the occasional tutorial, the speaker attached to the DF Player Mini attached to the ESP32 board burst into song! Along the way, I procured more bread boards because the ESP32 is too big to fit on a single one and allow connections […]

Heel Joint Resolution

I gave the styrene bits a good try, but in the end, there wasn’t enough material to hold onto with adhesive, and it didn’t work. Fortunately, disassembling the switch was straightforward, and I was able to adopt the better alternative with .01″x.025″x7mm “joint bars” soldered to the either side of the point, and slipped over […]

Point Hinge Ideas

If I’m honest with myself, I shouldn’t be surprised by a derailment at the heal of a switch. The hinge, based on the clever but fine rail joiner from proto87.com, was the most expedient solution to an age-old model railroad problem that I could think of when I was laying track. Considering this problem of […]

One small step…

I’ve spent a couple of days now puzzling over a derailment at the south end of the siding. The gauge is fine, almost too wide, and there is only the tiniest unevenness to the track. Then I got the phone out and shot a video on the far side, and the problem was immediately apparent. […]