Finally got around to finishing the mountain scenery, river and tunnel portal. The river is plaster that had been painted and then covered with multiple layers of gloss medium. Turned out more convincing than I had anticipated. Bridge is the Walther Single track Truss, backdrop is from LARC Products and the tunnel portal is from Woodland Scenics.

Finished up the locomotive servicing pad.

The Woodland Scenics kit was a real pain in the neck, the casting was really very poor and took a lot of work to clean up, also the fuel cranes were so very poorly cast that I couldn't get them straightened out enough to look acceptable let alone to clean the flash off of them as they are very delicate.

Replacement fuel cranes from Alexander Models were substituted and are much nicer in my opinion.

Finally finished up the first locomotive. Wasn't so sure about how it would turn out so before I stripped and painted one of my good locomotives I decided to paint an dummy Athearn Blue Box GP38-2 I had laying around. Turned out better than I expected so I added lift rings, grab irons, a brass horn, drop steps and MU cables. I also body mounted the couplers. One of my good friend was nice enough to bestow upon me a chassis which had the lengthened fuel tank and I scrounged up to Blomberg type B side frames. Since I was at it I purchased a TCS WOW kit for it as well.

Work on the engine house structure is complete. A Pikestuff enginehouse and a showroom kit were combined to form the structure. 

Finally making progress... I finished the diesel sand tower from Walthers Kit #933-3182 and the concrete fueling pad for the tower and the rest of the locomotive servicing equipment (working on those now). The weathering on the sand tower was done using the techniques learned in the "Weathering Like a Pro" two part video series done by Mike Confalone, if you don't own them I would highly recommend you do so. Overall I'm pleased with how it turned out.

Finally all the benchwork is completed and I can finally move on!

Next up... wiring... not sure which of the two I dislike more.