April Progress

April was a pretty productive month. A lot of changes took place on the layout. Mostly centered around the Billings passenger station and warehouse district, but I also put the connection to the other side of the section house in by adding shelves along the wall in what used to be the bathrooms.

On the first Saturday of April I had a group of guys from the division over to see the progress. I gave a clinic on the spline benchwork I used on the upper deck.

I had my two best helpers painting sky.

Katy is a great helper and her attention span is infinitely longer than her brother's. Here she is mounting the top of the valance to the wall where the bathrooms used to be.

I picked up some LED strips to add some light for the lower deck. I went ahead and doubled up the LEDs, but I think another two strips will be needed to make it bight enough. That's makes the cost about $48 for 16 feet plus a $10 power supply. At $3 a bulb, the light strings are about $52 for 16 feet - but produce a lot more light.

With both shelves in along the wall where the bathrooms used to be, I was able to see where the Yellowstone River crossing is going to be. Somewhere I have a third bridge. I'll paint them all black. The tree boxes also need to be built. I was thinking about kitbashing these Walthers kits into 150' bridges. They are a little short now. The middle pier is from Chooch and the concrete abutment is from Walthers.

Starting to get some track along the downtown Billings section. The LED lights aren't on in this photo but the lights in the valence provide good light for the front of the layout.

More painting for Katy. I recycled masonite from Shane's old layout here. I'm not sure I like it the way it is, but it was easier to work with than the sheetrock. The Homasote is painted with some light brown Oops paint I picked up that is perfect. I need to figure out some kind of cover for the breakers that I can paint blue and will be easy to remove in an emergency.

Inspired by layout construction

Coming back from Prairie Rail I was definitely motivated to work on the layout. While visiting Steve and Cinthia Priest, I snuck some construction photos for ideas. I've done this in the past, I supposed I should go back thru Lightroom and grab all the benchwork photos and study them. In the mean time, here are some closeups of what will surely be one of the finest layouts in the country.

Stephen and his crew have very tidy benchwork and wiring. You can see the LED lighting he has chosen to use.

Here is some more of the benchwork without the facia. This appears to be a very good method of turnback blob construction.

Stephen adds signs everywhere something needs to be done so that when crew members arrive, they know exactly where the projects are.

I'm not sure how much I like having the wiring in the front. On one hand it is accessible and on the other, it is in the way.

Some Central Valley bridges roughed in.

Another smaller, bridge with a pier or abutment on either side.

A nice deck bridge with a shallower drop in the benchwork.

Another one. This bridge screams Santa Fe to me.

Now that's what we're talking about. 

CMRI circuits neatly wired along side NCE.