The time for the meet is fast approaching!  I have been busy working on eliminating a couple electrical gremlins to do with my use of Peco power routing turnouts.  The problem seemed to be that two turnouts in a ladder would not keep reliable track power at the second turnout.  While I was adding feeders and cutting isolating gaps I also found that the throw bar was hitting the end of the ties on the adjacent track, preventing a complete throw.  It was not enough to cause the trains to derail, but the points did not contact the stock rail firmly enough to conduct fully.

  With those problems sorted out, I trimmed up a bunch of filler ties I had saved from installing the flex track and glued them into place under all the joints and feeder locations.   Now I need to look at getting the leg stabilizers/transport jigs made up.  I want to create a piece that can bridge across between the legs and double as a spacer to hold two modules top to top for transport, protecting the scenery, and making moving and storing the module sections a bit easier.  The ultimate goal is to have as few loose parts as possible when the module is set up.

  On other fronts, I spent some time cleaning up and organizing the workbench.  It's still not as organized as it needs to be, but every little bit helps!  Yesterday we went to the Hobbysmith to get out of the house on a rainy day.  My thought was to pick up some more colors of ground cover/static grass and look for some of the Noch leaf material.  I ended up getting an N scale "Super Trees Starter Kit", a Central Valley high portal 150' truss bridge kit, and two sheets of Evergreen "corrugated steel" styrene sheet.  

  Since I have been in tree building mode, I have been searching the web for different methods and everyone seems to rave about the "Super Trees".  I must say that peeking inside the box in the store, they are really very fine!  The starter kit includes a couple big containers of fine foliage ground foam in two different colors, two packages of Noch leaf material, a sampler of fall colors, a bottle of matte medium, a spray bottle, 5 sets of clamping tweezers, and a bag of "Super Trees" material.  $45 for the kit actually seems like a pretty good deal for the amount of stuff inside the box.  I'll post here later once I get a chance to build a few of these trees.

  The CV bridge kit is very nice, though there is quite a bit of flash on a couple of the castings.  Somewhere wandering around the back of my brain is a plan to model the Lewis river swing bridge as a FreeMoN module.  If my current module turns out nice, I would like to participate in the plans for the 2015 NMRA Convention.  The Lewis swing bridge module will require 6(!) of these kits.   The prototype bridge is double tracked, but since FreeMo is built around single track mainline, I figure it will be appropriate to selectively compress that aspect.  There is a similar bridge on the line that runs to Astoria that is single track.  One of the approach spans of the Lewis bridge is also shorter by one panel, I'll have see if I feel up to tackling trying to shorten on of these kits.  Even if I don't, I think the whole bridge complex would be pretty impressive, plus I may have enough on my plate scratching the structure that joins two of these units to make up the swing span.