The sculptamold hillside is looking good!
Mark, it's a bit like icing a cake. Just slather it on. It's great stuff for scenery-impaired types such as myself. 
Lew, I have used it in the past for ground surfaces
Chopped!
For some time I have thought the Lionel Portal Gantry Crane is too tall. An aesthetic thing, if you will. Anyways, I decided to fix that so I went to work.
Working with spare crane legs, with an Xacto saw I cut a piece out of each leg and glued the wheel-housings back on with cyanoacrylate (that stuff is like magic ).
Reassembled it looks like this:
I like the effect.
Functionally nothing has changed, of course.
Next will be doing something about that ridiculously out-of-scale cab. I'm thinking about cannibalizing A Lionel NW2 switcher cab.
Attachments
I like your shorter gantry crane, Lew!! I'll be glad to see what you do with the cab!!
Mark, the basic idea fits pretty nicely. The size and shape seem about right. I just have to build a stepped shim to match the flat NW2 cab bottom to the stepped crane floor. It would [obviously] also need to be removable for winch maintenance.
Lew I just went through you evolution epic. Very enjoyable to watch the changes. You've got a sweet layout there.
