It’s been a while since an update. I kept telling myself I’d update this blog when I got the layout cleaned up. I finally realized that was never going to happen, so I dug out the camera and took a few “status shots.” Nothing really fancy, and I apologize for the mess - I can’t seem to keep the top of the layout free of tools and other clutter when I’m building. At this point I have everything from benchwork to wiring going on at once. While this helps progress (for example, I might find 20 minutes to work on the layout some weekend evening – and that usually isn’t enough time for benchwork building but is perfect for putting in one Tortoise – or laying a couple of pieces of flextrack.) So, something gets done. Eventually such piddling progress adds up. But keeping all the various tools and materials handy means things usually look messy.

Here’s a fairly recent view of the layout - the big ongoing benchwork project has been the construction of the peninsula. This peninsula is about 32 feet long - meaning that one lap up and back is a scale mile of railroad. The plan is for peninsula to be double-decked – meaning this represents 2+ scale miles of run. Just visible to the right edge is the Homasote surface of East New London yard.

On the other side of the peninsula will be the small town of Yantic (on the lower deck) with Palmer located above it on the upper deck (the upper deck supports had not been installed when this picture was taken).

The subroadbed sections for the peninsula are cut - they are all out in the garage at this point. Building a double-deck layout is a little befuddling since you have to think in terms of the process - you don't want to install the upper deck until the lower deck track is in, for example, since you may end up hitting your head a lot! We’ve learned a lot about the construction of multi-deck layouts since while we’ve designed plenty of them I don’t think anyone on my construction crew has ever actually built such a large one.

"Montville" (none of these town names are definite at this point, although I keep using the prototype names, so I'll likely stick with them) is  the site of a large paper mill. At this point I’ve gotten the wiring and most of the Tortoises installed at Montville, so trains are running there (although every time we saw wood in the basement I have to clean the track, or so it seems!). Once the pair of low wood trestles are installed here (An actual modeling project - finally!) we can run trains from New London to Montville.

Here’s a switcher working a cut of cars into the chemical track at the mill: