It's become fashionable to call the throw bar of a switch by its proper name: switch rod.  Now, I'm all for using the correct terminology, but it seems to me that calling the giant chunk of PC board that keeps model switch points the correct distance apart gives these abominations more credit than they deserve.  If, on the other hand, we call it a throw bar, and conceal it somehow, we give ourselves an opportunity to create a nice model of the switch rods themselves.

We left off last week with the straight(ish) stock rail in place, congratulating ourselves on a good evening's work, considering we started with bare plywood.  This week, we got through most of the rest of the engineering, with the exception of the switch rods.  I hope to get those and the remaining details done by the end of the week so I can get back to house construction, and clear up the turnout mess. 

You'd be excused to think that it's a little late to go testing my planned turnout construction. But well, I'm changing it up yet again on this layout, and the Proto:87 posse was in danger of passing me. So, we raced ahead with everything else before finalizing construction techniques. If it doesn't work out, I can always retreat to PC board ties!

One of the challenges with building Pembroke in a house that is still under renovation is that some of my research material is buried. While the basement has been largely finished since before Christmas -- don't ask me about baseboards and that closet door -- there are still shelves and various cabinets to construct. So, I've been relying mostly on information on my Canada Atlantic research website and on my Flickr stream (mostly not public). One critical photo lives only in a BRMNA book, and it shows the relationship between the mainline and the area around the engine house.

This week, the posse consisted of just Jim and myself; Julian being stuck down a hole somewhere, and Andrew being off chasing the ghost of the Northern Pacific. Between this and a previous session with Andrew, we have most of the ties laid. The trick to placing ties quickly and accurately is a tie jig, which my daughter helped me build a couple of months ago. It could hardly be simpler, but it saves a lot of faffing with glue and individual sticks of wood.

This week, after a short hiatus to visit my family, I'm doing more figuring on how a Canada Atlantic turnout must have looked. "What, can't we just pull some standard drawings from the AREA and use those?" I hear you asking. Well, no, we can't and for that reason, we also can't use the excellent kits from the Proto:87 Stores either.

My daughter's first recognizable picture was an apple. She was perhaps three, and at the time she was already a prolific artist, producing mostly pages of coloured straight, parallel lines. But this day, I was working on the endless basement reno, and she came down and presented me with a beautiful red apple with a green leaf. "Oh, what a wonderful apple!" I exclaimed. She beamed and went upstairs to produce more, reappearing a few minutes later with a sheet of parallel lines. "Lovely!" I exclaimed, "What is it?" She looked at me with the look that I hadn't expected her to perfect for at least another ten years, the look that says "Oh, Daddy, you are so dense!" and she explained, "It's lines."

What did Andrew and I (the other member of the posse being in Nevada) get up to last night?

Lines.

Two roughly parallel lines.

Andrew and I met in the garage again last night. The garage has been pretty full of layout for the past week, and soon the layout is going to be the sort of thing that I don't want to find bikes leaning against. Time to get it out of the way! So, up it went, next to the ceiling.

Tonight was a Posse night for Pembroke. We managed to finish the roadbed on the north section of the layout before running out of glue. Nearing the end of heavy construction, it was hard to contain my excitement. So I got out a couple of test cars and posed them on some flex track.

As we near the end of bench work construction, it's time to start thinking about the track. For some reason, I don't feel much like working on any of the actual construction projects this evening. So, I whipped up a quick spreadsheet to estimate the quantities of things like ties, joint bars and rail and so on.