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I haven’t written much lately but I’ve been building a LOT. As I mentioned in July, We moved to a new house with a workshop . The plan was to use the shop space for the layout (of course) and a workshop space for model building. So much for plans. We’ve started teaching “build stuff” workshops [...]

<p>I’m going to be spending some time tidying up the site. This site has been online for over 2 years now and have officially published 112 articles! During that time I’ve found that there are things that have become redundant and others items that are becoming increasingly important. One of the more ‘major’ additions I made [...]</p>

Here’s a few tidbits of local operation for future reference. Last night, while coming home from dinner, we passed three light BNSF units heading toward Stege at Albany California on the #1 UP main track. On occasion, the BNSF will run light power from Oakland up to the Wye at Stege in order to turn the consist. This accounts for Oakland-bound light power occasionally running long hood forward. i.e. the consist is actually running in reverse back down to it’s next northbound assignment out of Oakland.

The Carquinez Model Railroad Society is having its annual December Open House on December 6, 2008. The open house will be 10am to 4pm, December 6, 2008. A donation of $2 per adult, $3 per couple or $5 per family will help them keep moving forward. The Carquinez Model Railroad Society is located at 645 Loring [...]

Woodland Scenic’s roadbed is too wide. For the past year I’ve been staring at the rails on the NES, and now the WGR, trying to figure out why the track seems so crude and toy like. Originally I presumed it was because of rail size - having used code 80 on the NES. I changed rail [...]

  Corte Madera Creek trestle. Facing east, north is to the left. One of the clearest remaining artifacts of the Northwestern Pacific Railroad in southern Marin County is the Corte Madera Creek trestle and bascule span. I’ve always been attracted to the railroad-to-water interface and this captures a lot of that charm and has a lot of small [...]

Having successfully overcome the "cheap turnout control" problem, finding a solution for the "cheap electrics" problem was a snap. I decided that rather then bother purchasing toggle switches to control my electric blocks, I would use regular household switches instead. My house is very old, and in an attempt to preserve some sense of history we've [...]

From time to time, different aspects of life take over everything else. Presently, my work is taking a much more time than usual due to a pending merger between my company and another. In fact, I should be working right now instead of blogging!

But I will say that even when life gets crazy, it is very important to keep a little part of the week safe from the turmoil. For me, I have been doing pretty well at carving out Tuesday nights for railroading despite having a lot less available time lately.

When I built the Niagara Escarpment System (my first N scale layout) I rushed the track and regretted the decision later. I didn't bother to do a very satisfactory job weathering the rails - opting to give everything a quick spray of paint before ballasting. I had been more concerned with the colour of the [...]

Here are some more videos of the WHRC in action. I've also updated the earlier post to include preview images of the videos. [MEDIA=5] [MEDIA=6] [MEDIA=8] [MEDIA=9]

One would think that a simple railroad like the WGR would be easy to wire - and I suppose it has been 'easy' job, but it certainly hasn't been a small job! Until I actually started soldering I hadn't taken into account how much wiring I would need to do in order to wire each [...]

The WGR is progressing slowly - and that which is being done isn't really worth a feature here. In an effort to maintain some sort of publishing regime, I'm going to start uploading a series of videos of the Windsor Hantsport Railway Company. I want to extend a huge thank you to Kim "Grizzz" Little - [...]

Progress has been steady and I’ve completed the basic structure for the first bridge.  As mentioned, I’m attempting to pay better attention to non-train details - thus I’ve put a little more thought into this simple bridge then I would have in the past. I’ve decided to freelance the bridge design based on local examples, as [...]

Before I can proceed much further in the layout I need to finish the wiring, weather the track, and install the concrete bridges for the highway. My last layout taught me that while trains are number one, it’s important to give roads/houses/industries and their elevations equal thought. I have seen (and am guilty [...]

Having completed the track I was eager to try running some trains. I had been rather cavalier when I installed the track work - not bothering to test each turnout etc., in favour of simply finishing the job. As such, I was eager to get trains running and see how I did. The verdict? I managed [...]

Progress on the WGR has been slow of late, but I’ve managed to finally finish laying the track. As mentioned in an earlier post, the switch machine dilemma was one factor responsible for the summertime pause. However, once I was able to finalize the switch machine design, progress ramped-up considerably. I’ve yet to wire each of [...]

We just had a long weekend for Labor Day. Here’s what I squeezed in around family stuff.

Atlas 17,360 gallon Tank cars

Sat urday started out well with a couple of hours working on rolling stock. I like to replace the trucks on Atlas cars with MicroTrains trucks. Atlas N Scale couplers are less reliable than the MT couplers so they have to go. Quite frankly, I would be perfectly happy to buy Atlas cars without any couplers or trucks, especially for a few bucks less. I wish!!

Volume 3: Electrical and Control (Including DCC) is a case study of how Joe’s layout is wired and an in-depth look at DCC wiring, installation, and configuration. Joe Fugate was kind enough to send me a review set of his Siskiyou Line videos. The five volume set covers almost all aspects of the design, construction, and [...]

One of the challenges I’ve been trying to solve over the last few months is what to use as turnout controls on the WGR. While foam bench work offers many design advantages (ease of construction, weight etc.), its solid structure complicates installing switch machines – a practice greatly simplified in open-grid bench work designs. I wanted [...]

I generally steer clear of model railroading related philosophies, but after reading this post I thought the author deserved a mention. David K. Smith articulates some of the issues within the model railroading hobby quite eloquently. Titled “Members Only”, David discusses the apparent divide between ‘model railroaders’ and ‘modelers’ - discussing the difference between [...]