Thanks for your patience guys. My son and his friends were up early this morning and were out running around town, before I even got up. I'll see him later. I'm going to have him and his roommate help me with a few clean up projects around the house.

August 2018 Update

Got quite the scare Thursday, I was down in the train room, and I keep a link on both of my computers to this topic. I clicked on the link downstairs, and received the cryptic message from the forum "This topic has no posts" wit a blank page. PANIC! I ran upstairs to my laptop, and everything was OK. Quite the relief. I showed it to my son last night, and he said the link was corrupted. That has never happened to me before, so I didn't think of it. Easily fixed after that.

Well, after three and a half long years of work, the big days are almost here. The National Narrow Gauge Convention starts Wednesday and runs through Saturday. I still have a bit of cleaning to do, but other than that, I'm ready. I've chosen to be open all four days. Turns out that all the layouts near me will only be open Thu - Sat, so I doubt anyone will show up Wednesday. I had no idea what the others were doing, so I just signed up for all four.

So, what happened in August?

Patrick came over once, and we started where we left off in July, with the garden tracks around the turntable.

The big smile on my face is because, all the track on the entire layout is finished!!!

Patrick put the final coat of paint on the fascia.

I have accumulated quit the collection of shipping containers over the years. It was always my plan to use some of them as scenery. These stacks over at Park Junction are actually hiding a hole in the backdrop. This shot is actually looking right at it.

From a different angle, it is quite visible, but most viewers won't make the effort to get it.

More container stacks over at Shoreham.

More attempts to conceal backdrop holes.

I'm quite pleased with the way this one turned out.

This is a Menards car, with a couple of Atlas containers.

I unpacked a bunch of trains this month, including this bunch of cabooses. I miss Cascade green.

Patrick and I filled in the plywood base under the Short Line bridge.

Then it was time for a quick coat of paint.

I had a bunch of 40 year old acrylic paints. After getting rid of the dead ones, I found a bright yellow, a bright red, and a yellow oxide. With a half inch artist's brush, I stippled the paint onto the backdrop. then started to add trees.

Now that Patrick had painted the fascia, I was able to finish applying my lettering.

Finally, I took some white paint to a big section of Cottage Grove. This entire aisle will be winter, so it was fun to get a base coat on it.