Running Repairs

One of the reasons you’ve not yet seen any videos of trains running on Pembroke is that I’ve been unhappy with the way the 4-4-0 was behaving (the other is that I find editing videos is way harder than typing a few words). It has sat in a box for several years awaiting rails to […]

My Railfan Five

Chris Mears challenged me to the Railfan Five this evening. As I mentioned in my reply to his post, I don’t regard myself as much of a railfan (who has time to wait for trains?), and so, I don’t have all that many railfan photos. However, here are some that I like, in no particular […]

Why Pembroke?

I suppose, given the recent conversation, I should come clean and explain why I am modelling Pembroke. My interest in the Canada Atlantic Railway started in my late teens. I was certainly influenced by Niall MacKay’s excellent book, “Over the Hills to Georgian Bay.” But, if I am honest, I was thinking at the time […]

Why do we do the things we do?

When Ron Keith sought me out at the train show in Burnaby in November 2012, the doctors were giving him until Christmas to live. Ron wanted to give me a plow that he had built from a photograph I had given him more than a decade before. A couple of weeks later, I was at […]

Staging Yard Installation

Tonight, Andrew and I installed the staging yard. That is, we screwed down the plywood onto the window sill, and almost go to the point of fixing the track in place. It’s coming along nicely, and already looks more like a window sill than a staging yard. The most excitement was when we decided to […]

Feeding the turntable

To feed power to the staging turntable, as well as to fix its location, I’m planning to use some telescoping brass rod and tube. I want these controls around the front of the layout so operators don’t have to reach across the track to make the connection. The plan is to mount pairs of tubes […]

Staging turntable progress

Today, I shaped the hole in the staging yard that will take the turntable. This turned out to be harder than expected as I had somehow managed to cut it undersized with the jig saw. It wasn’t undersized enough to widen it with the jigsaw, and so, I had to sand it out to shape. […]

Recessed Ties

Yesterday, I finally mustered up the courage to pry the staging yard trackage up from the piece of plywood that will cover the window sill and form its home. Far from the mangled mess I feared, the track actually came off without much fuss, and even slid temporarily onto the windowsill so I could work […]

New Workbench

It’s been more than three years since I took down my workbench and started on the basement renovation. This weekend, I finally installed the table top on the new one, which is built into the cabinets beneath Pembroke. Here it is cleaner than you will ever see it again. I had thought I would get […]

Thoughts on the Staging Turntable

A turntable at the end of the staging yard will enable me to simulate the action of the Y at Golden Lake. The mixed train will break apart there, replacing outbound with inbound cars, and the engine will turn, before coming “back up the branch.” We will have to fiddle or switch the daily passenger […]