Time to play catch up, since my last post was Wednesday. Let's start with last Thursday.
I added the 6" ledge to the front of the near track.
Then ballasted and glued about 7' from the slight curve at the bottom of the picture.
I added more foam to fill in between the track and the backdrop.
I glued a bunch of ballast that I had previously spread on the mains.
I added more around the curve and glued that too.
You can't see it anymore, but there was a small gap under the track where the ballast and glue would have fallen through. I had to slide the ties out of the way, then I jammed some small pieces of the matching stone that I had sifted out, to fill the gap. Extra hassle.
I got the ballast spread over a good chunk of the bowl tracks. Only the mains are glued here.
I got all the switches ballasted. Tedious!
That brings us to Saturday. Patrick came over, and we kept working on filling the holes in the lower deck. Here, we finished the riverbed below the ledge I put in Thursday.
We put in this nifty curved piece too.
Filled in the back corner with OSB.
Then moved back up to Chemolite for the final pieces there. I'm just about ready to ballast the upper track here. Still have to caulk the seams.
With the wood work done, I started adding cardboard to the riverbank.
From there we moved over to aisle two, and filled in the corner at the west end of Newport. Note all the sawdust. Cutting all these odd shapes requires lots of trimming, resulting in extra mess!
We moved on to aisle three to fill the huge holes between Hoffman and Chestnut.
Moving on to Sunday, I cleaned up the sawdust from Saturday. I didn't finish taking pics from Saturday, so I took a bunch Sunday showing what Patrick and completed. We left an access hole. Just to the right of the access is where the Lionel hobo camp will go. This area is just about ready for rail paint and ballast.
That chunk of OSB sitting up there will be cut to fill the next hole.
There's not much left to fill in at Western Ave. I have to move all those cars before Patrick's next visit.
More of Saturday's efforts. I was late taking the pics.
On to something we haven't seen in a long time, switch throws. About a year ago I added four more switches, but I put off doing the throws because they weren't important. Now I just want them done. One was a simple Caboose Industries ground throw. The other three are my push rod type. Time to make the linkages. This first one will be easy, but wait til you see the other two.
If I remember correctly, this switch came from forum member Patrick H when he tore his layout down a few years ago.
Here's the tricky part. I got lucky and just missed the conduit. This will need some special treatment when I do the push rod. At least I can access it.
This one is far worse. It happens to be one of mine, a Right of Way, salvaged from enterTRAINment. I'll have to stick a tie in that gap. It's located just above Red Wing on a one foot wide shelf, in the are known as Frogtown. The rod is going to be rather long on this one, in order to get to a spot where it can be reached easily.
Here's the problem, the angle iron and the 1x4 cross member make access nasty. The rod needs to pass through the 1x4, because it has to run off to the right. Fingers crossed!
I spent hours cleaning up the sawdust. It was worse in aisle two because it got into the ballast. Fortunately it was glued down pretty well.
I filled in some of the remaining holes along the fascia over at Hastings.
It's amazing what a difference it makes.
I'm going to try very hard tonight, not to crash after dinner.
