North Section Ballast – One Step Forward?

I didn’t quite get to the point where the Posse could start laying rail when they (in the form of Andrew, Julian being in transit, Jim being MIA and Chris being a thespian) descended upon my garage last night. Even so, we did have a productive evening of ballasting. The reason why I didn’t quite […]

Switch Rods

I wrote before about my dislike of just about all the switch rods I’ve ever seen on model railways (including my own). The standard PC board has two things wrong with it. First, it usually doesn’t look much like the prototype, which is typically made of a flat steel bar a couple of inches wide […]

Finished Points on South Section

Just in case you begin to believe that energy on Pembroke has been diverted to Brio-Pembroke, I did actually finish installing the points on the south section of Proto:87-Pembroke last week. Each of the points needed only a little bit of judicious filing before it would sit perfectly against its stock rail and the test […]

First Operating Session

What, wait did I skip a few posts? Yesterday, my daughter was sick, and I had to stay home to look after her. She wanted to get out the Brio trains and have a good proper play, which is exactly what we did — for about four and a half hours! Now, ordinarily, I get […]

Wiring up the South Section

Tonight I soldered all the feeders to the bus wires. The frog feeders are still hanging loose, but all those stock rails are fed now. It is singularly uninteresting from a visual standpoint, and the photo came out blurry; so the photo below shows something else. Working from above, it has been easy to forget […]

Fixed Rails Finished on South Section

Tonight I dropped the last section of rail onto the Lee Manufacturing siding and declared the track laying done, except the points on the south section. Interestingly, this was the first time I used one of the Proto:87 Stores rail joiners, all the other rails on this section being only one length long for now. […]

A Young Helper

I worked from home today (it was our annual pretend earthquake), and so, we finished homework long before bed time. “Would you like to play on the iPad or come and help me do some soldering?” I asked the boy. “Hmmm…” (weighs the options carefully) “Help with soldering!” Actually, this is a posed picture. However, […]

Progress at end of September

It’s September 32nd, by my reckoning. So how am I doing against the Big Hairy Audacious Goal? One month in, and I think I’m about a week behind schedule. For those of you who are no better at math than I am at reading a calendar, that’s 25% behind schedule. At this rate, I’ll have […]