This weekend, after soccer, we went down to Great Wolf Lodge for some kid-focused fun. On the way, we stopped in at Rocket Doughnuts in Bellingham and took them to Julian Watson’s house to share with his family. Julian’s is the only other Proto:87 layout that I am aware of in North America. It was great to reconnect and see what he’s been up to. … Continue reading The other Proto:87 layout?
It’s been a busy week for the Gourley household. Between community association events, work and helping my friend Scott with his layout, I have been out every evening. That left scant energy for my own trains. So this morning, while the kids were having their screen time, I carved out a little time to start putting #10 back together. I got as far as putting … Continue reading Testing the new decoder
In my last experiments with the Cricut, I found I could control the direction that the cutter takes by mirroring the panes in my N-scale windows. Unfortunately, it seems that this knowledge does not make much of a difference in the cutter’s precision. To test the theory, I cut 56 windows (224 mullions), spread evenly among standard non-mirrored cutting and .020″ and .015″ mullions. I … Continue reading Cricut – mirror experiment
This evening, I finally found time to test out the super-thin motor leads for #10. It looks like they should work. First I installed the motor, and verified that there were no shorts between the frames and either lead. The most likely failure here would have been at the gearbox flange, where the tissue paper and copper foil sandwich overhangs the end of the flywheel … Continue reading Rewiring #10
Eighteen months ago, Andrew and I ran some experiments to see if I could improve the effect of light washing up the backdrop. I was disappointed with the result, being too subtle to simulate sunrise or sunset. I was pretty much ready to replace the RGB strips with a simple white strip. This week, I am travelling for business, and began wondering if I could … Continue reading Revisiting the Light Wash
One of the challenges with getting computer equipment is where to put it. So many devices have curvy corners and odd shapes and a need for odd footprints. They all have wires that need to connect to something, even if it is only for power. So, it was with glee that I found that the Cricut fit into a shelf under the layout that had … Continue reading Cricut Installed
Because my experiments getting my Cricut to cut N scale window mullions yielded mixed results, I did some experiments this evening to see if I could improve. Because my initial panes seemed to be undersized, I started by cutting some 1″ squares in card. From Design Space, these turned out to be surprisingly accurate, and the actual size of a 1×1″ square is within a … Continue reading Experiments with Precision Cricutting
