Parked

Before he left this evening, Andrew convinced me that it would be cool to see a train run on the other half of the layout. The only thing stopping it was a layer of glue and paint on the rail heads (I can hear you laughing, dead-rail people). So, I found a scrap of Arborite […]

Thoughts on Shipping for Pembroke 87.1

So far it’s just a thought experiment, but Dave Doe recently put me in contact with Maurice Hopper, who, it seems, is a bit of an expert on building layouts that really travel. When I mean travel, he doesn’t bung them in the back of his estate wagon and cruise out on the interstate. No, […]

Staging Frogs and Stocks

I just finished soldering down the frogs and stock rails for the staging yard. So now it is a little more apparent what it looks like. I had hoped to be finished last night, but some misalignment in the mid-way crossover required a night’s sleep. Well, it’s done now, and I think it looks good […]

It’s not the hours, but the minutes

Yesterday was one of those days when the rest of my life took over and there wasn’t any time for the trains. Or was there? I had fifteen minutes from 7:30 to 7:45 while the Boy was playing on the iPad (he gets 15 minutes a day) and the Girl was watching him, and I […]

Del Rosamond’s Photos

I would have to go through my notes to see just when I met Del Rosamond. It was in ’96 or ’97, I think. I called him up out of the blue from the Champlain Trail Museum, where I had been doing research, and they had given me his name. “Sure, come on over,” he […]

The Screaming Banshee Rail Grinder

Today the boy and I set up the Screaming Banshee Rail Grinder (SBRG) and in relatively short order, ground all the frogs and points for the staging yard. I thought I had described this machine previously, but I can’t seem to find it, so here we go again. It’s just as well really, because some […]

Sketchup Photo Match

A couple of weeks ago, I picked up some foam core with an eye to starting to mock up the buildings for Pembroke. Unfortunately, there are no drawings to start from for any of the buildings. So, I thought I’d try out Photo Match on Sketchup to see if it could help. I was surprised […]

Filing the gauge side

I suppose if you have to reinvent something, it’s time to write it down so you don’t have to invent it yet again later. Tonight, I had hoped to get the Screaming Banshee Rail Grinder out, but I only got as far as filing the gauge side of the frogs and points before the noise […]

Staging Yard Ties

I’ve been spending most of my recent train time trying to get the turnout controls to print. The good news is that it looks like they’re going to be sufficiently robust. The bad news is the original design had a lot of overhang, and would come off the 3D printer bed at the least provocation. […]

Staging Yard Points

As you recall, the staging yard is on a wide window sill, and that means there is no room for Bullfrog or other switch machines below the roadbed. Because the room provides a number of functions in our house, we want to be able to make the staging yard look like a clean window sill, […]