Farewell to yet another Waterbury landmark

Although the Waterbury Vermont station has been wonderfully restored the other buildings that once stood across the tracks haven't been so lucky. The first of these to disappear was the feed mill that was directly across the tracks from the station proper. Now, I understand from Bill Brigham and some of the other folks in Vermont that the former CV freight station is no more. The photo above was taken during a late winter safari with my friend Alan Irwin. Alan was a  dear friend - but he was a train chasing rail fan at heart and never really understood WHY I would stop and take pictures of buildings with nothing around them - especially in a dimly lit cold (and I mean cold) Sunday afternoon in early March. 

I'm glad I did. 

Here's a photo of the feed mill I took the same day. 

Of course, I plan to include these on the layout in the Waterbury scene, but at this point all that exists of the freight house is the footprint. (For the record, this is "full size" in HO scale):

Leveling Sand

Not much has been happening on the layout in the last few weeks, but I did spend some time in the basement today - the track laying crew are getting fired up again. I fully expect to be able to reach the end of track laying chores during the summer. 

In the meantime . . . 

On the Proto Layouts Yahoo Group this week one of the topics that came up was the use of Leveling sand to create a fast and easy ground base. Simply apply the leveling sand to the layout base, then glue in place with adhesive.  Ted Pamprin uses this material extensively on his C&O layout - and I've tried it as well and find it works great. Ted holds it in place with an additive use to make tile grout flexible. This stuff is available at any home improvement store (Home Depot, Lowe's etc  . .)

Here's the stuff Ted uses to cement the leveling sand in place: