You know what it’s like: One second you’re thinking to yourself that this is a fantastic mug of tea and the next you’re thinking that when you solder an N scale turnout together the solder pad bonding the rails to the ties is only about a square millimetre in size. Further to that thought, you catch yourself thinking about all those times when you burned a tie trying to move a rail closer to gauge. Your mind wanders and you can’t hold back any longer. The seconds slip by as you find it ever increasingly hard to ignore that question you’ve been mulling over and why you don’t just glue the rails in place.

Before I get too far into explaining myself here I will mention that I have memories of fibre-tie flex track. I remember what it was like to work with that stuff and those memories were on…

When I got out of bed today I thought I would make some coffee and then head west to join up with some model railroaders from Moncton who were visiting on the Island today to operate on some local layouts. While savouring the first mouthfuls of hot espresso I figured I’d switch on the computer and double-check today’s schedule. Then I realised I’ve made a terrible mistake: the Moncton guys weren’t going to be here today. They’ll be here tomorrow. It’s been a long time since the last time I was that grateful for re-reading an email. Feeling a little embarrassed, I poured another coffee for myself and looked around for something quiet to pick at so as to not disturb the tranquility of an early Saturday morning. It didn’t take long to warm up the soldering iron and with that in hand, I added the missing rails to my…