Thanks Clem! I'll keep at it.
Some updates:
Got all the sub-roadbed pieces in the basement with the help of my son in law. Believe it or not, I actually laid out one of the biggest pieces half backwards. I was looking at the plan drawing upside down as I was laying it out and got the curves on the wrong side. I had to put the piece in upside (rough side) down to get it to almost fit. Now I need to adjust the other end. I'll figure something out.
You can see that the narrow end's angle is now going the wrong way. Here's a shot of the other end and it too is going the wrong direction. In the picture is it passing under the piece on the right.
I don't think that the rough-side is a big problem since it will be completely covered by everything else. I've got lots of scrap and will be able to make all kinds of patches to fix this. This problem would never have happened had I been successful with the projection idea. Oh well...
On Friday morning I woke up mentally building all kinds of things for the layout. I developed a different way to build the wall brackets and I decided that I would have to cover the ceiling with Tyvek since the basement is rife with spiders. This is a "poor-man's" drop ceiling. Between the Tyvek and the Tyvek tape on all the joints, there will be no way for the spiders to wander around the joists and drop down on the layout. It also keeps the dust from coming down. And it brightens up the space a lot. I did this in the old house and it worked very well. It's a lot of work and I thought that I could get away without doing it here, but my rational brain won. Here's a view partially completed. You can see how much brighter it gets. The Tyvek is tough and all the graphics are on the other side and it's opaque so you can't see it.
It should be done in a couple of days and then I'll start erecting bench work. After laying all the pieces out on the floor, it appears that the swing-out entry gate that I'm going to construct based on Clem's design will completely clear the lally column and will be able to open fully. Before long I'm going to have to make a big order to the Vinyl Bed people and Ross Custom Switches.
I've looked at the new Ross roadbed. Can anyone tell me about it? It seems that it would cost me a lot of money, but I love that it fits all of my switches perfectly. It could greatly reduce the amount of time to build the layout.
BTW: I learned something about cellar spiders. They make all those nasty cobwebs. Instead of building a neat web and waiting in it like the orb-weavers, they throw up their stuff all over the place and periodically check back to see if they've caught anything. That's why you never actually see them in their cobwebs. Kind of like how lobster fisherman work... And they don't belong on my railroad.
