While I haven't yet used the Gypsolite, I did do some things yesterday. I did a side project which eliminated the shadow area in front of the city. I bought and installed a 3-head, track light which will do double duty of illuminating the city and eventually light up the shelves that will hold overflow trains. I sprung for LED spot lights so as to not add much addition electrical load to the already loaded basement circuits, and they run very cool. All in all they use 27 watts. NOTHING!
With the new warm-white, dimmable LEDs, you can get terrific lighting with low power and no heat loading. They're expensive, but they'll be working after I'm probably gone. People will be selling houses advertising if they LED lighting installed.
I then continued adding Sculptamold to the areas which already received plaster cloth. Those areas are done and today I'm moving on to adding more hard shell to remaining left-end terrain. This includes both ravines, which by now you have all figured out that I am procrastinating about. I wanted to gain some experience with hard shell before attacking the most difficult topography on the layout.
Just for fun I put together a high-level task list of what's needed to put this layout in a reasonable level of completeness. I know, I know, model railroads are never really completed, but I wanted to see what this looks like. It's 46 items and is just scratching the surface. I estimate about 3 more years of work to get it there. This doesn't include putting any skirting below the fascia boards, or covering the ugly shelves in the left corner of the basement. If I store the train boxes underneath the platform, that space could be an area for expansion. Like this railroad isn't big enough already????
