North switch closure rails

The first step in forming the closure rails is to bend the wing rails at their ends, leaving them over-length. I then bend the closure length so the rail wants to lie very close to its final position. Here the diverging rail has been bent and is awaiting trimming. Once I am satisfied with the […]

North switch feeders and stock rails

To accurately locate the feeders, I place the rail in position, and then file a groove in the bottom of the foot with a triangular file. I use my old file, so it doesn’t get gummed up with Pliobond. I then flip the rail over and deepen the groove slightly, and then scrape the Pliobond […]

Elitist? Bring it on!

Mike Cougill has initiated another interesting conversation via his blog, this time responding to the allegation that he is elitist. He also points to the Model Railroad Hobbyist thread on the topic of elitism, which I started reading when it was a young thread, but lost interest a few days ago even before there were […]

North switch ballast and rail preparation

I am getting the bulk of the ballast in before the rails go down on Pembroke. I’ve always found that ballasting after the rails takes a lot of fussing, and then it moves anyway. I’m leaving the areas around solder clean until they are proven to work, but the plain track, which is glued, is […]

North Switch Tie Colouring

Before getting on to colouring ties, I had to correct the throw rod hole. Unfortunately, when Andrew was here on Wednesday, we aligned the hole for the throw rod with the original centreline. Now that the centreline has moved, I needed to move the hole over as well. This was a simple matter of whittling […]

Ties for the North Switch

After scratching my head for a while over the misalignment here at the north switch of the siding, I decided to pull a few more ties off and smooth it all out. With the aid of a wooden spline and my darling wife, who braved basement and sore back, we got a new centreline marked […]

One More Turnout to go

Andrew came over last night, with the intention of starting to test the parts that we’ve already done. However, I got to thinking that the only thing stopping us from connecting the two sections was the corner desk top, and I can as easily slide that in the side as drop it in the top. […]

Pembroke 87.1?

Well, Dave Doe is at it again. Every couple of years, he pulls together everyone in Europe who does anything with Proto:87 and invites them to a big display somewhere. Last year was Scaleforum, this year they’re at RailWells, and next year he’s enticing me to trek over to Sedan, France. October 2015 is just […]

Researching the turntable

In 1905, Pembroke had a 50’3″ turntable. Sadly it was removed in the 30’s when the passenger trains were run by a gas-electric, which was too long to fit on the turntable. So, we have no pictures of it, much less plans. From the 1908 GTR bridges and building book, we know it was almost […]

Installation Day!

This afternoon, I invited a bunch of good friends, Andrew, Scott, Ken, Julian as well as Margot and Patty over to help install the layout in the basement. I wasn’t quite as ready as I’d hoped to be, but with so many helpers, we managed to get it installed all the same. When we finished, […]