Inching towards 200,000!

Poking our nose out to say we should be hitting 200,000 unique views on this blog sometime in the next 24 hours!!!!

 

Wordless Wednesday #80

Wordless Wednesday #79

Wordless Wednesday #78

Wordless Wednesday #77

Grassing things up

Added about eight linear feet of static grass to the area north of Williams Creek Bridge. I decided the "almost straw" grass colors looked pretty good, but it needed a little something to give it a bunch in a couple of spots - the answer was some bright red Sumac by the embankment. Next step - fence line and telegraph poles. I might add an old stone fence in the woods, almost overgrown by brush, but that will have to wait until after the Cocoa Beach meet. 

I also added some more trees to the ridge behind the Waterbury freight house and feed mill. We arrived in town to catch the sugar maples at their peak - truly "electric maples" - they are the brightest on the layout. (And yes, I know the freight house needs a roof before the winter…!)

Trees, trees, and more trees….

I made some trees over the holiday weekend last week. 

Today I planted some of them. 
The lead photo shows the trees in the transition area between the "peak" colors and the "past peak" colors. 
Next step is some static grass in the foreground. 

Rockin' Out?????

 I spent New Year's day rocking out...

Lots of little rocks that is!

I spent a fair amount of time ballasting track - Made great progress, but there's still a bit more to go.

To capture the look of a transition era mainline requires a three stage process -

1. Cinder fill on the sides. After that dries (by the time I worked my way around the layout adding cinders it was time for lunch, and by the time I got back at it the cinders had dried enough to proceed!)

2. Add the gray "rock" ballast to the main and passing sidings (spurs and house tracks get cinders...)

3. Still need to go back and tweak a couple of holidays and other spots.

Got everything ballasted from the north end of Randolph to the south switch in Richmond - I have no idea how many linear feet of track that is, but it's a lot. All that remains is Richmond itself, the south end of Randolph, and the passenger station at White River Junction.  

Only thing that stopped me was I ran out of ballast!

Sorry for the somewhat poor DoF on these photos - I took them with my phone before I left for the office this morning, and apparently my hands were a little shakey from all the "rockin'" I'd been doing...