On last year’s National RR Convention layout tours in Tacoma, I picked up the idea of putting an overlay of roofing paper upon my RR yard and under the tracks to simulate ground. I figured it would be a lot of work, so I successfully procrastinated until this past weekend when the weather was just too nice not to work on the layout. Here is the result of Saturday’s work. Eventually I may put ballast under the tracks and scatter RR dross on it to make it resemble a real RR yard.
Then the weather was just as nice the next day, so here is a tour of my 9 yr-old folded dog bone with an extension across a redwood deck into an invaginated loop. The first image is the RR yard table but before I put the roofing paper on it.
From the RR yard, the mainline goes along a hedge to a wye that is supported on a modular arrangement of pipes and planks, all of which can be taken up in 10 minutes so that the big gate can be opened and admit a dump truck or a bulldozer.
Trains turn sharply right at the wye into a rock and cactus garden.
Then trains pass through colorful flowers beneath four large citrus trees:
From the citrus trees, trains enter a Tehachapi-like loop and then can return back into the layout just traversed:
OR they can take an escape route down a 5% grade onto a redwood deck that they traverse on rails inset in the deck like streetcar tracks:
From the deck, trains enter the invaginated loop in the most recently built part of the layout. Then trains return across the redwood deck, up a 4% grade, and thence back into the main layout. The entire layout is track powered, five of the 13 switches can be activated remotely. Ants and falling oranges are problems.
All of the bridge and trestle work is scratch built using a Proxxon table saw, a little glue, and lots of brass escutcheon pins. All of the benches are scratch built, too.
