What's up guys??? Been installing groundthrows on all my yard tracks, and cutting gaps to get it ready for wiring. The hardest part will be gapping and wiring the scratchbuilt double crossover in the yard throat. There needs to be 24 more gaps put in on that one piece of track. Need that number of gaps to ensure no shorts when going thru the crossover. A little more wiring is required at times when you handlay everything. I guess that I could have cheated, and used commercial components, but I wouldn't have been satisfied.
When thats done, the trackwork for the yard and rndhse areas will be finished. The rndhse has 9 stalls and there are 7 more open air tracks. A couple of my friends wants me to start doing some scenery, but not yet. There will be no scenery done until 99% of the track is installed, and working perfectly. That's a personal goal that I've set up for this layout. I don't particularly like the plywood pacific look it currently has, but I've seen too many layouts where the scenery gets installed before the track is completely bulletproof, and that just causes operating problems. That means that it may take another 2-3 years to finish the branchline up to Maplesville. I'm in no hurry.
Been puny the past month, as my sweet wife brought home a bug from work the first of Oct. that turned into pneumonia. She was over it in less than a week, but me..... Just now getting over it, and grandson and his mother took off to Little Rock last week for a visit with the other set of grand parents, and wouldn't ya know it, he brings me back another URI! Getting tired of this stuff.
Once I get the yard wired, I can start having real op sessions. That will force me to get several of my locos that aren't in one piece, needing painting, or decoder installs done so I can run more than some arties, and 2-10-2's and a few others. But before that, I gotta have a track cleaning party. Last time we ran trains on the layout was about 2 months ago, and I know that the track has gotten filthy in that time. The garage environment and just regular under use has contributed to that problem.
Guess I finally need to break down and build some John Allen cleaning cars.
I don't know that my wife will let me get a centerline cleaning car to supplement the JA cars. Maybe Santa will be good to me this year.