It's been a long time since I posted an update on the construction of my HO layout, so I thought it was time to let my fellow MRH readers know what's been happening lately on the N&W Pokey District, Sub 1 3/4!

Up here in Minnesota, when the weather gets warm, the layout construction really slows down. When winter lasts almost 6 months, last thing I feel like doing during the summer is spending time in the basement! It dawned on me however that there are a lot of railroad projects where I don't necessarily have to be in the basement to get them done. So last summer I spent quite a few hours out on the back porch with my FastTracks jig completing the last 25 or so turnouts of the more than 70 that are needed for my layout. Plans for this summer include building two Micro Enginnering tall steel trestles that are needed to span a gulf, and possibly making a whole ton of Supertrees that will be needed for this Appalachian mountain railroad. 

A few other things to note: I replaced the lower level manual staging turnout controls with Tam Valley servo motors - a definite improvement, and made the turnout control panels. I also cast all the tunnel portals, made tunnel liners, and installed everything before finally putting plaster on the mountains. 

I used the Woodland Scenics tunnel liner mold for the liners, but boy, was that a lot of work!  I wanted the liners to go far enough back into the mountains, so they looked like a real tunnel through solid rock. It seemed like it took forever to get those liners done. While I'm pleased with the results, if I ever do another layout, I will definitely be looking for a different method. 

As layout construction has progrossed I've realized that while a lot of hours have been spent on projects, it's not always that visible. Sometimes non-railroading friends come over and ask what's new on the layout since last time they saw it. I think they expect to see grandiose changes and are disappointed when things don't look that different. That doesn't really bother me, but it has driven home just how labor intensive this hobby really is! It's also given me a new appreciation for those of you who have huge basement empires! I don't know what people consider a big layout to be. I've never seen any layout standards that define what's small, medium, and large. Mine is an L shaped 13' x 22' layout, and I have to say at this point, I'm glad I didn't make it any bigger! I think it would have overwhelmed me, not just financially, but mentally and emotionally as well!

If any of you have read my past posts, you'll know that initially I had not planned for a backdrop. Many on MRH  encouraged me to rethink that decision. I'm glad they did. The layout is definitely much better with a backdrop, but little did I know how challenging that would be for me. I can paint houses just fine, but when it came to painting backdrop artwork, it literally took me months to finally get it. I think the backdrop is about 1/4" thicker now after all the layers of paint that went on with various trials until I finally got something I was pleased with! My thanks to all of you who so patiently tutored me and helped me learn. I couldn't have done it without you! MRH is truly an abosultely invaluable resource! 

Ok, enough chit chat, time for some pictures.

Here's the turnout panels:

Here are some close-up shots of the backdrop:

And here are the newly plastered mountains:

You may have noticed that on each of the mountians there is a ridge that runs the length of the mountain, close to the bottom. These were added after the main mountain was completed. I'm planning on placing super trees in front of those ridges, with "puff ball" trees behind them going up the rest of the mountian. I think this will bring the "puff ball" trees up to roughly the same height as the super trees, so it looks more like an actual tree canopy, rather than the look of something like big bushes growing on the mountian, which is the impression I get of many "puff ball" covered mountains. I don't know if this idea will actually work or not. Seems to me somewhere Joe F. suggested this, so I'm going to give it a try. If any of you have experience with this set up, I'd sure like to hear what you have to say.

Next major item on the list of things to do is to add the rockwork and get some fine turf down to give the mountains a semi-finished look before trying to tackle a few thousand trees! 

As always, your comments are welcome and deeply appreciated!

Paul Krentz

N&W Pokey District, Sub 1 3/4