Sorry to hear about your setback, Craig. I am glad that you were able to recover from it and that the fix will be better than the original!
Eric
Glad to hear you got your problems worked out and are moving forward again.
Hand laid track looks really good but commercial track is so much easier and less trouble to maintain.
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Yes the hand laid track looked good but with the ties moving on me it became a pain in the butt. Even with the turnouts I’m having a few issues. I think I’ll slowly replace the turnout ties with PVC ties glued to PVC board so they can’t move. Ironically the hand laid ties worked better when it was just a floating trench system on the ground.
All this track is actually from Paul Burch and his former railroad.
This is approximately the old design of the building layout for the Redmond section. Blue is road/parking lots areas.
This is the and more accurate representation. Makes the siding a lot bigger as well.
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It’s a slow slog but its coming along. Between life and just general household tasks it’s taken a lot longer than I wanted but hey its a hobby.
I bet you’re glad that’s tucked away now Craig. Looking really good. I really like the idea of a single track going somewhere, and doing stuff on the way. You’ve got it down nicely.
I’ll give you a few months to catch up huh? We don’t stop for winter down here. 
(edit) tbh, it’s probably pre convention panic setting in… 
Cheers
N
Once again…that word…“winter.” Explain!
Craig,
Glad to see all that track going back to work. It went to a good home.
Phase 1 of the track is officially in and rolling. Still a lot of tweaking and minor repairs to make but the layout can handle a car rolling from staging to the end of track without help from the 0-5-0. A total of four duckunders but during a formal ops, that number hopefully drops by 1.
The goal was to have something roll across the layout by the end of the school year and I’m a month early!
Now I can focus on cleaning up the layout, and backyard along with the last few things in order to get ops started and that includes some new batteries in the locomotive and tweaking sound files.
Video runs from the end of track to staging.
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Craig;
It’s looking very good, although I suspect some pruning of 1:1 bushes may be on your agenda.
Best, David Meashey
Yep. I need to prune those for sure. I pruned the darn thing last spring. I guess I need to go more aggressive. 
As long as you’re happy with the mighty 0-5-0 helper engine, give yourself another year!
Congratulations on the successful test!
Thanks. It felt really good to finally roll something along the tracks for once. Now I’m ready to push forward with the next section and forget cleaning up the backyard. But I told myself that I would get the backyard done before creating more of a mess in the front.
On the list that’s not railroad related: build the retaining wall blocks around the fire pit area, bring in a ton of play sand for the boys and section off the digging pit and rebuild a fence section. But some of those projects require a working pickup to grab stuff and guess what’s been sitting in the side yard for a couple months now with a dead battery and some other minor repairs? 
I don’t think my wife would appreciate me filling the suburban with play sand but I can get away with lumber…
I’d like to rip the whole thing out actually. It’s one of about a dozen native wild huckleberry plants scattered throughout my yard. I enjoy huckleberries but they are a pain to pick and these ones taste more like a blueberry rather than true red huckleberry. There’s another plant in there as well along with another huckleberry plant about 3’ over.
Well @Neil_Wiggins I’m starting the process of building the last 4 turnouts I need for the layout.
I’ve got a lot of yard work and cleaning up to do in the backyard before I can make strides in the last section. Plus start slowly hoarding the boards, grinding up a few old stumps, ripping out some huckleberry plants (I have plenty of them, they are almost invasive in my yard), moving a hydrangea for my wife in the fall.
I doubt l get to even build the track structure this summer but I’m trying to prep track at least!
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Nice work Craig.
What # is that - looks like 8 or 10? And is that Al track & brass frog??
I’m hoarding my brass rail for turnouts but it never occurred to me to mix up the stock & closures (if that’s what you’re doing…).
Cheers
N
Close guess. It’s actually a #9. For some silly reason all the railroads west of the Mississippi use odd numbered frogs and all the railroads east of the Mississippi use even numbered frogs. Every hobby manufacturer makes even numbered frogs, I’ve never seen or heard of any odd numbered frogs in any scale above a #5.
The branch I’m modeling has all #9 turnouts so I figured what the heck. I have 1 #6 on the outside portion due to a curve and then the staging yard has both #6 and #4!for space savings.
Yes it’s aluminum rail for everything, brass for the frog ( I have also used nickle silver but Llagas was out when I ordered) and Llagas points. Points would be pretty easy to make out of brass but I like the Llagas points just for the ease of assembly.
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Been a while since I updated LSC about the layout.
Just pulled off the bench another building.
I also discovered two new industries I hadn’t previously known about. Not sure when I’ll add them but I’ve offered to have my layout on the 2027 NMRA National Convention tour so I’ve got to get my butt in gear with layout projects.
This industry was just east of Redmond and was a brick plant.
I think I’ll have just barely enough room to add.
The other industry is just to the leftside of the brick plant and services a warehouse. Not entirely sure what products but it leaves quite the range of possibilities if I decided to add that as well. Right now the focus is finishing up the already established areas prior to spring when I hope to break ground on the final extension out front.
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Being a bit of a masochist adding to the list late in the game. I understand it week before an open house I started making changes additions. Sometimes it’s hard to say enough!!
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At the rate I build I probably shouldn’t add additional projects to the list.
But hey, I’ve got a goal now and I’m bound and determined to get some stuff done. I’m trying really hard to do something each day and not be lazy.