As requested, I will show some pictures of the 80s/90s layout I’m building.

My story of the layout : Indiana City is a fictive town south of Chicago which is mainly served by Mopac and the Illinois Terminal.

And there is some interchange of other railroads as RI, BRC, IHB and CSX

And in this town the Illinois Terminal and the Indiana Railroad interchance on their electrified lines.

In my timeline both interurbans still exists, there had been no bankruptcy of the Rock Island and no UP-MP merger.

This is a plan of the layout :

I’m currently building on this corner of the layout. Other parts of the layout are stored in the basement at the moment.

Some pictures of the track work – all tracks are hand laid

Patrick, you asked about the road.

It is made of 2mm Styrofoam and painted with Revell water based colors.

At first a layer with gray paint and after it is dried I add more strongly diluted paints.

They are so fluid that the individual brown and gray hues mingle. This mixture I simply let dry.

And this is the result :

Ballast and ground cover are bought at ASOA in Munich,Germany – http://asoa.de/ I don’t know if you can get it in the USA.

For the gras and bushes I use material of Woodland Scenics, Silhoutte/MiniNatur, Model Scene and Polak.

And I use sand and some loam/earth mixtures, sifted through fine laboratory sieves with mesh sizes of 0,8mm, 0,5mm and 0,3mm.

So much for today. Many more pictures you can find in my blog in our german US Model Railroader forum :
http://www.us-modellbahn.net/forum/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=25144
But I’ll post new pictures from time to time also here in this forum.