Today is the last day of the 2014-2015 Seventh Annual International Winter Layout Party.:crying: Participants are encouraged to make your final posts in the next few days: Post pics and tell about the goals you worked on; let us know how you feel about your work and if you would do anything differently if you were to do it again; and tell us about any projects you'll be working on in the next few months. All you folks who dropped in to this year's Party to check out participants' posts, please feel free to offer comments...and PLEASE join the next Party as a participant as well as a viewer.
Next week, I'm finally having the rest of the drop ceiling installed in the final 12x 20 quarter of the trainroom, so the only work I've done on the layout this week is pack up cars and structures on the upper and lower deck in the area where we'll be working. I also took down a 10 inch wide strip of mismatched paneling pieces that I put up "temporarily" 11 years ago to cover the bare studs that showed above the top of the upper deck backdrop in this part of the basement. I was able to make a little more progress on reorganizing car movements within the steel mill...sort of slow going because many of the improvements in operations entail tweaking how the various mill jobs are done and that usually means I have to pull up track and relay it in a better configuration, rewire the track and turnouts, and then revise the job description so operators know how the new job differs from the old one. (But all the tedious attention to detail on the railroad is still WAY more fun than working on taxes!!) My goals for this layout party included completing some small electrical projects and revitalizing scenery in the Wesley and Hillards Blocks of the Eastern Division. The electrical projects work perfectly, and I'm very pleased with how the Interstate overpass and the detailing of the Whitehouse grade crossing turned out: Early in the Party: Later in the Party: Making lemonade from lemons when some family medical issues arose, I had an opportunity to work on a kitbash conversion of a double track through truss bridge into a draw bridge. That project is about 1/3 done and I hope to return to it in a month or so when I finish reorganizing car movements in the steel mill, scrap yards, and main rail yard.
All track work and feeders have been completed on above mentioned track work. Still working on buss connections. This structure hasn't been built or planned yet, as expected. I do have an old Life-Like Moore & Co building as a very good stand in for now (Might just add on to it and forgot a new build). Removed all track in the old yard area and filled in gaps in ground cover. Opted to stop and focus on Buss connections and getting operational ASAP. I've really been slacking in the picture department in this party. I've been working out of town on weekdays since Feb 2, and will be through Summer 2016, so modeling time remains crunched. I promise I'll try and get some pictures Friday morning!
Well, I'm afraid that the weekend didn't go as expected. I got exactly half of the first three items done on the list above. No photos, although really their wasn't much photo worthy. (I suppose I am pretty happy with how the one bridge I painted turned out...if I can get a pic soon I'll post it)
