I picked up another 4x8 roll of grass mat this week. I have invested more in the mat than the entire rest of the project (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-surprised.gif)But I really like it much better than raw or even painted plywood. This piece I trimmed to fit before it went down and used a better quality double sided tape; one that has a backer so you can get the first side stuck down before exposing the second side. It only took an evening to get the mat finished and one more to put down the last of the track.
I had to modify a few of the special cut pieces, but all of the stock pieces went back together exactly as they were during the test and ended up in the center of the “BOX”. But don’t take my word for it; check out these pics!
Looking South from the Phase 2 bench work (light green grass). The old Main Line is the right hand track at the bottom that curves across the fold-up bridge. The Willow Hill Spur branches off the left and continues down to the corner where it curves West into South Willow Hill and terminates at BOX…
At the far left is an industrial track that serves the Willow Hill Depot, Willow Hill LCL Freight, McCown Freight Forwarding and Russell Poultry. Having 4 industries, plus the fact that each door at McCown is treated as a separate entity makes for a lot of switching and running around to service this track. To the right of the spur is Golding Square Box Co. and the far right track is the passing siding / run around.
A view from a little ways down the track. The cars spotted in the foreground are at Golding. In the corner under the water pipes is Chandler Quality Water. At right Shorty is holding in South Willow Hill…
A close up of Chandler Quality Water. The track at left is where Russell Poultry will be located, the two curving tracks are the spur main and passing siding. Shorty is still holding at SWIL…
An overview of South Willow Hill (SWIL) and the South Willow Tank. Wall station will winter here but move back outside in the spring. BOX is to the right and has just enough room clear of the SWIL switch for an engine and one car. Since my diesels require a HEP car they can’t switch SWIL. The short tail track requires numerous moves to work Chandler…
And finally, looking back North toward the depot…
I still have a few hours of construction work left to put the wall parts back together, then I can clean out those shelves and start moving stuff back in them. That is likely to take a while because I need to keep working in JMRI on the switching plan and testing the outcome (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-smile.gif)
And finally, I’ve updated the schematic…
Notice the Gauntlet on the top two tracks. By curving the main to allow more space to the wall I created a pinch point. It is marked by the orange vinyl on the ties in the first picture. Cars on the industrial track will block the spur, and cars on the spur will block the industrial track. Just one more bit of operational interest!
