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.

Backdrops

Had some help from the family putting up some backdrops. Decided to continue with 1/4" sheetrock because of cost and ease to work with. I have a lot of 1/8" Masonite, so I may move to that material in the future.

Once I taped and mudded the sheetrock, I put some paint on the backdrops. I went with a Home Depot Behr color called Aztec Sky. 

A little paint.

It turns out that Devoe Upland Green is no longer available at Sherwin Williams or any other paint store around here, so I grabbed a few cards and picked a couple shades that I felt were close to the US&S CTC machine boxes. Here are a couple shots of the painted valance.

Since painting, I've mostly been cleaning up so I have room to work.