New Hills

As you can see from the previous post, I completed the scenery behind the elevated track. However, I still can't work on the remainder of the track until the scenery in FRONT of the elevated track is complete.

I started that also last time, using cardboard strips hot-glued together into a mesh. I have now covered that with plaster cloth to provide a base for rocks and sculptamold. I learned my lesson about coloring the plaster cloth. You really need some type of plaster to better accept the coloring. I added a lot of rocks, mostly small, to the hills. Now, I've started plastering the sculptamold and hope to finish this week. The challenge is to make sure I don't get any closer to the track when applying the sculptamold. Then I realized that I had forgotten to do something else first.

I was worried about interference between a train and the hills on the elevated track, so I decided to install the cork (permanently) and track (nailed only) on the section from near the yard to the end of the Cascade Mountain scenery. I then took a 50-foot old-time passenger car and rolled it down the track. Yippee!! No interference!! Since I'll be using primarily 36 and 40-foot cars and small engines, I should be okay.

Unfortunately, that's when I realized that the track wasn't wired for power, and the best time to do that was BEFORE I did the scenery in front of the track. Nuts. Okay, not a big problem. I can measure where I need to install track feeders, then drill a larger hole in the plywood to make it easier to grab them from underneath the layout. I've marked the planned locations on the track with pushpins, which I will leave in place so I can find the holes more easily when I install the wires.

I spent most of my free time these past 2 weeks devoted to finishing the club's module legs. I finished this past Sunday, or at least as far as I can, given that I'm missing hardware still (casters, rods, knobs, etc.). The club received their credit cards, so I sent two emails to them requesting that they either buy the hardware or let me, and then reimburse me. The second email was to request the purchase of some of the wood we need to build the initial module(s). No answer as of today, Wednesday. As we are getting close to the train show that we host, my late September train trip to Oregon, my October vacation, and my daughter's visit in early November, I may not be able to do anything until mid-November. Then the club has our annual Open House on the last Saturday in November and the first two Saturdays in December. In addition, when I go on vacation, I need to put my tractor back into the shop, so there won't be any room to work on the legs anymore. Not very promising. I will be reporting this at the club meeting on September 3rd if I don't get any answers before then.

Next steps are to finish the sculptamold, drill and install the elevated track feeders (but not connect to the power bus), color the hills, and hopefully paint the next backdrop. I also need to decide what type of bridge I'm going to install over the river. The old trestle bridge I had built can't be modified nicely to place there, so I may need to make another one or use some other type of bridge instead.

I still need to test run a train around the loop to make sure nothing bad has happened since I started doing the scenery.

Until next time, thanks for reading.