Anyway, I'm taking this week off to burn off some vacation days, and since the wife is back to work (FINALLY) I have some unsupervised play time. Here's what we've been up to lately...
Put in some time on the layout today, mostly on adding fascia around the front side across the windows.
If you disregard all the rubbish below that narrow green band of masonite, you can see the progress. The most interesting (read Pain the Arse) part of the project was figuring how to make the helix look a little better, yet still keep it accessible for emergencies.
This is what I came up with.
The portal on the left is the Connellsville sub going into the top of the helix. I cut the portal out of sanded plywood and added some trim pieces. The whole section from left to right was supposed to be one solid piece of plywood, but somewhere between the attic and the garage, I lost a half an inch, so I opted to just cut it in two and use some foam to fill the gap.
I'm going to make a "half dome of foam" to stick some scenery there next to the upper helix track, which is now, by the way, ballasted. If nothing else, I can use this as a photo backdrop for rolling stock shots.
The primary access for the helix remains up the middle... the blue tub you see there slides out, leaving plenty of room for even us full-figured railroaders. And I'm going to have to go under there tomorrow, because I've got three more bike cable/click pen installations to do to get the A/D tracks fully functional.
So at this point, I've got about 6' of fascia to do around the Cumberland area, and another 4 or 5' on the front edge of the yard. Inch by inch, it's getting done!
Looking great (he says, while conveniently placing his hand over the lower section of the photo...)! The way it swirls down and around like that, maybe you could call that area Flushing? ;-)
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