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, […]

Clouds

Most of my railroad time this week was spent on painting the clouds. Like everything else, I got better at this as I went along, and so, I kind of did it about one and a half times. I roughed the clouds in on Sunday with some plain white paint, and they looked pretty flat […]

Constable it Ain’t

Tonight I painted a base layer for the clouds. They’re definitely going to take a second layer before the white covers over that hideous not-quite-gradient of blue that I put up there. As this is only the base layer, I didn’t bother with any shadows, and so, the clouds have no form yet. So, it […]

Base Cabinets Stained

This week, I made the face frames for the base cabinets, and I just finished staining them. I must say, despite Andrew’s warnings that it would not go well, I am impressed with the results. Here they are drying, or setting or whatever stain does: The stain is Old Masters Red Mahogany gel stain. I […]

More Switch Stand Refinements

Andrew and I got together the other day and finished up the switch stands for the north section. This resulted in yet more refinements to the design, as well as some creative problem-solving. The first refinement was Andrew’s suggestion to not tap the hole in the throw rod extension, but rather to use two nuts, […]

Well Now it Just Looks Like a Crappy Paint Job

Can you believe that I was so cocky as to claim that I thought I knew what I was doing when it came to painting a gradient on the sky? Yeah, me neither. Tonight I painted the second coat. It only really needed it because there were some thin areas up near the corners, and […]

Field Trip to Pembroke

Yesterday, I made the trip from Ottawa up to Pembroke to capture some measurements I didn’t get the last time I was there. The whole family (including my sister and her daughters) came for a trip to the Bonnechere Caves, which was a pretty cool cave system, guided by a theatrical and informative local boy, […]