As I develop my operations plan, a recent discussion brought some new considerations to light. I have two yards. one main and one secondary halfway across the layout. Recently a co-operator told me he disliked running trains out from the main yard to a town or district, switching, and returning to the same yard. He felt it more interesting to switch along the way ending up in another yard. 

I always hate to cut up perfectly good bench work. But I wanted to break up the scenery with a river. So here's the start.  Hope to get it done over the weekend. 

Here's the rough cut with the piers in place.

Second shot are the bridges for a test fit. Back bridge is the main, front is off to a small industry.  Off to the glass shop in the morning to get a small mirror for the backdrop.

Sticky Water - About 2 weeks ago I poured Envirotex light for a river and pond. To date I still have several sticky to the touch area's. I believe I mixed it accordingly, and some area's are rock hard and fine.

Can I do another pour over the sticky area's with another product in hopes of hardening those area's..???

Thanks in advance

Feed and walk the dogs, then it's off to the basement for a quick pour of the intermodal ramp. 

Here's our work from the past week, from plaster to grass, the quarry area get's ready for buildings and track

I think I just found what I dislike the most when building a layout. Today was Spackle the facia Saturday. 260 feet of sanding and spackling, and I am 2/3 done with coat #2 ( out of three ). I am white, the room is white, the dogs are white, and the wife wants to know why there is "smoke" coming from the basement. Despite my best rube-goldberg vacum set up that dust goes everywhere...!!!!

I just keep telling myself, you only have to do it once..........

Work progresses steadily on the TSR. While the railroad is set in the 1990's in New England, a friend stopped by with his steam engines to do some track testing. I find there is no better test of track reliability than running various steam engines with different wheel configerations. I am happy to report that we had only 1 minor derailment. Things are looking good.

Short freight climbing the grade

The final 18" segment of mainline track awaits the construction of a bridge and river on the bench work. This will complete about 400' of mainline in two rooms, and a chance to run trains all the way around the second level.

Despite having to take a few days off next week to move one of the kids into an apartment up in VT, I hope to post the progress of this area as it progresses, which I hope will be rapidly.

Here's a new one for me.

I am building the layout in a finished / heated / AC basement. Track is Code 83, Shinahora that is lightly glued with Phenoseal and track spikes added. Rail joiners are NOT soldered. Switches are not glued.

Average temp in the basement runs about 60 to 70 degrees, with winter temps running about 64 degrees constant in the basement. Humidity runs about 65% average, although I noticed on the cold days here in the Northeast it went down to about 45-50%.

Some more quick shots

The layout goes from Room #1 ( single level ) to room #2 via grade ( No-lix )

Franklin ( my scenery crew ) works on the cardboard strips. We went to Costco and they gave us large sheets of cardboard they use on the pallets. We ran them through the table saw for strips.