Am I Too Pale?

It's been a busy few weeks, and not all of it has been on the layout.

More work was done for the CMRC club modular layout effort. We received the leg lumber donation, have obtained a 20-foot piece of 1-inch aluminum tubing for the alignment pins (enough for at least 37 modules), and the alignment template arrived yesterday. The leg lumber ended up being 1x4 instead of 1x3, as the 1x3 was MDF and would not work for the legs (I burned up a router bit trying to make the slot).. I've verified that the tubing is indeed 1-inch and fits perfectly when installed in a hole drilled with a Forstner bit.

Ham radio also intruded on my time. I participated in the 7QP event (18 hours from Saturday 7 AM to Sunday 1 AM). I was able to make 92 contacts (voice only) even though band conditions weren't great. I'm still waiting to see the results.

Now on to the layout. When we last visited, we had the pink mountain, which replaced a cardboard strip and plaster cloth mountain, which failed to maintain its shape. I normally don't use foam, but it was the best choice for the situation.

While it had fit into the correct location, it needed to be shaped to look more like a mountain, so I grabbed my surform tools and proceeded to add some contours. Once I was satisfied, I used Sculptamold to further improve the slopes, and then added a layer of plaster cloth to cover that pink.

When everything was dry, I installed it in its location and determined that I needed to shave some in a few places, but also that I needed to add something to the right half to make it more realistic. I had some flexible timber retaining walls from Chooch and test-fit them to determine how they needed to be cut. Once cut, I used foam adhesive (same stuff as between the layers) to attach the wall pieces. Once dry, I reinstalled the mountain and verified that, except for one 2-inch area, I had clearance. In that area, I'll move the track to the edge of the subroadbed to provide clearance.

I removed some material in the front support (see the holes) and underneath the left side to reduce the weight. I removed the mountain and will now use some dark wash on the timbers to make them more gray to reflect weathered wood. I'm also going to add some ground cover, trees, etc. (plus a way to more easily remove the mountain if needed), and then clean the area where the mountain will be located.

Then I'll finish that right-side corner! It will get some rock coloring, more ground cover, rock retaining walls, and more rocks in front of the retaining walls. I'll temporarily remove the tall trees and the large rock until later when I can add a small backdrop behind it. The retaining walls will continue along the backdrop to the tunnel portal into the mountain.

Once I finish all of that, then I'll clean all of the track and run some trains to make sure everything still works. I'm planning on installing some block detection in the staging area so I know when tracks are occupied, since they will be hidden there. I still need to determine how to wire the Digitrax BD4N.

Enough for now. Laer!