Turntable Improvements

To avoid any nasty crunching sounds as I was disrupting traffic on the main these past few days, I undid the three screws that secure the turntable module and levered it out and onto an open drawer. While it’s accessible, I will be making some improvements. First of all, the lock has not worked properly […]

Modelling on the Road

Years ago, I worked as a consultant for a database company. A road warrior, often away early Monday morning, returning home Friday evening. It seems like other modellers are able to get some modelling done while travelling; I’ve even heard of a pilot who would build models in the cockpit during long flights. However, the […]

Water Tower Complete

I think we’ll call the water tower complete for now. I wound up printing the ladder so I could get round rungs without losing my mind drilling holes. The wooden supports for the ladder are quite delicate, and the ladder just lies in there loose so I can remove the roof and mess with the […]

Water Tower Tank

Now we get to the meat of the matter: the tank is usually considered the hardest part about building a water tower. In my case, the hard work was mostly done in OnShape. The prototype tank in Wakefield has two different types of band connectors, and they are in different orientations. I copied these differences […]

Spout Installation

It took two attempts – the first with epoxy, and the second with CA – to get the spout and frame mounted on the base. The epoxy didn’t work out because even with help from my darling wife, I wasn’t able to clamp it where I wanted it. With CA, I could hold it by […]

Register Refinements

It’s hard to believe that almost two years have passed since I introduced train registers at Golden Lake and Pembroke. In reality, there would be two registers at each station – one for each direction. However, in the interest of reducing the amount of stuff, I decided to make only one book that serves both […]

Ball Float

The water tower received a brass ball float and mast. The ball will indicate the water level in the tank, and I will animate it to lower when the valve is open and slowly return to the top of the mast when the valve is closed.

Water tower Spout frame v2

After the experiments a few weeks ago, I thought it was just a matter of attaching the water tower spout and its frame to the base and hooking it all up to the final model. Unfortunately, there is a surprising amount of complexity in the “attach the spout frame to the base” part of the […]

Pembroke Snacks

Pembroke is set in 1905, and so that number tends to leap out at me whenever I see it. These cookies, introduced by Leclerc sometime before Christmas, caught my eye, and I finally bought a box this week. I wonder what kind of research Leclerc did before slapping the 1905 label on them? I imagine […]