Track Repair and Scenery

Yesterday, I was running the trains for the first time in probably 2 months. When we discussed the next time we would work on the train (Lisa calls it our "play date"), we could either finally tackle the bad track section between the liftout and Irwin Yard, or we could begin the scenery on the hills in Herminie and Uniontown. Bruce suggested we fix the track and I was hesitant.

The Cobweb Express

 I ran the trains before he showed up just to make sure things were working. Surprisingly, they ran although as you can see in the photo, 2 months idle is plenty of time for the summertime critters to get busy. In fact, in one corner of the layout, Bruce discovered a large, industrious spider apparently attempting to take over East McKeesport.
I was very hesitant to rip out the track. The outside track was OK and "most" trains ran east or west with little problem. The inside track could only run east bound, always derailing westbound trains. Bruce's idea was to replace the flextrack, which could not see to hold the correct spacing over the liftout cut with sectional curved track. We replaced the inside with 2 sections of 18" and 1 section of 22" radius track pieces and the outside track with a single 22" radius section. This worked so well that Bruce was running tracks BACKWARDS around the layout to test the reliability. He says this is his method of testing track...ouch! Actually, the trains performed very well only derailing once in a totally different section of the layout.

Testing the outer track first, everything works great!

It actually took longer that I was anticipating to fix and test this section of track and Bruce said he only had about 20 minutes before he headed out. Perfect to get started on some scenery.

The hill and tunnel in Herminie PA ready for scenery

Since he did the plastering on Herminie Hill, I wanted to leave the rest of the scenery for him to complete - other than the base coat of "earth" paint I had applied to get things ready. Now Bruce claims has not done much scenery work before but one of things I like about my approach to scenery is that if you don't like it, you can easily cover it with trees and bushes, or quickly strip it off and try again.

Bruce applying different colored grasses to the mountain top

 AS you can see from the "after" photo, its looking pretty good.

First application of scenery

After I took Lisa and the boys to dinner, I had some time Saturday night and decided to tackle the hillside in Uniontown which is tens of miles down the line, but actually on the model railroad only on the other side of the scenery divider from Herminie. I had more time than Bruce so I was able to get a little farther along.

Adding scenery to Uniontown hill

In my next post, I'll talk about some of the work I've been doing in the corner of the layout where Route 30 provided a view block, I have several structure projects underway and I think the next time Bruce comes over, we either will make tress or better yet, I need to have a few dozen ready to place on the layout.