Been awhile since I had much to report on layout progress. For one thing, we had a lightning strike that knocked out 9 of the 18 fluorescents overhead. Took a month to replace all the ballasts, but while I was at it, I replaced one of the cool white lamps in each of the affected fixtures with daylight lamps. Big improvement. Interestingly enough, the T12 fixtures in the old part of the layout, the ones I had wanted to replace anyway, were not affected.

Then the storage room, which had been open studs, got sheetrocked. Partially this was because of a critter who had developed a habit of pushing past the insulation and walking through the rest of the attic and eventually demanding to be rescued. As tempting as it would have been to me to decline performing said rescue, the prospect of dead cat in the attic sort of ruled out that option. Sheetrocking the room required moving everything out of it, installing new shelving, and moving it all back in.

So last week I finally got back to module work.

Modules 8 and 9 are being worked on at what I would call an offsite fabrication site (the next room). These two are two S curves, one of which is the Fall River bridge. I’ve finally gotten the roadbed installed, and the non-bridge one will have the ties and rail laid this weekend. The bridge one is having all that done, except for the three-span bridge. If I have any sense, I’ll get the plaster gauze on these two modules at least, before they go into their actual location. Module 7, which is in place, has never had anything beyond subroadbed because the plaster, various tools and styrofoam scraps are on it. This one is the town of Eureka and I can just barely fit a siding and a team track on it, probably really too tightly to be realistic. But that’s a problem for later.

The very first two modules I built were for a storage yard. They sat vacant, until I came up with a good track plan that I could assemble from off-the-shelf turnouts and flextrack. Now that one is coming along well, with four of the seven tracks complete from end to end. Had to wait until this weekend to pick up more rail joiners and code 83 flextrack to finish it, then when it’s done I will connect it to the railroad. Still no power to it, so there’s some soldering in my immediate future.

And last year I cut two holes in the wall to build a connection between old and new. The new part, which was the first segment to be built with CVT ties, had the rail attached with cement. This has essentially failed, so I’ll be going back over it, drilling out the occasional tie and spiking it all down. Then, on the end toward the new part of the railroad, I’ll lay track on the subroadbed which occupies that pair of holes with the tunnel between, then mounting about 20 feet of track on brackets on the wall — and it still will dead end. Believe me, there actually is a grand plan for this somewhere, as soon as I figure out what it is.

Got a chance to pass through the actual town of Eureka last week, and I’d forgotten how high those bluffs are just west of town. Now I know what my scenic divider should look like.

Also got a chance to visit a model airplane and gamer shop in Wichita, Hobbytown USA. They have a good selection of Woodland Scenics, tools, paint and other basics for a modeler. Even had a couple of freight cars and locomotives, mostly Bachmann. But I’m pretty sure that it’s no longer possible to buy a Kadee coupler in Wichita.

Ron Merrick