The track next to the storage facility/parking garage is buried right to the top of the ties. So that was tonight's project.

Heres the location.

While this building isn't rail served, its such a key element in the overall concept of what I am building that I had to include it. This is the building. It's an indoor storage facility and also a parking garage that the railroad runs right next to before it crosses W North Ave and the railroad bridge over the North Branch Canal onto Goose Island.

This is my version of this structure.

Second attempt at photo lamination. I think this came out pretty good.

One of the nice things about our hobby is that if you get tired of working on one area you can do something else. Such is the case this very hot Florida weekend when I decided to lay down a couple of streets. Using some tips from a past post I found here on MRH on building concrete roads, my first step was to spray on a coat of flat aircraft grey, which as it turns out is almost a concrete color. Then when that had dried I used Woodland Scenics concrete top coat over it and let that dry. Then with a fine tip marker added the tar crack patches. Good so far.

Been wanting to try Lance Mindheims photo laminating process and figured this was a good place to start. First structure in the layout. Still needs a bit of tweaking and some additional details. The walls are brick jpgs printed to scale. The big doors are paper. The roof is printed tarpaper. The glass door is from Lances website. The door was cutout first and glued on. Then black construction paper was cut around it. Then the window section was placed on top of that and then the brick on that.

I had 2 goals this weekend.  To get all the track laid and to fine tune my rolling stock. Added weight so now the average of the 14 freight cars is a whopping 9.6 ounces. Yes you read that right. Not to long ago, I read, I think it was on MRH, but it may have been Lance Mindheim, that if you give your cars some real heft than your loco will really seem like its working hard. I also added metal wheels and fixed any bad couplers.  The other project involved getting the track laid down the way I planned.

The canal has now been cut in. The major street is outlined so I know where it's going. The canal will be 11' below the bridge deck which should look okay. In looking through various catalogs I cannot find a type of bridge that is similar to the one that crossed the canal onto Goose Island. May have to scratch build that bad boy.

Well I am glad I decided to stick with the Atlas turnouts instead of tearing everything up and replacing them with Pecos. Just had to add a couple of feeders in the proper place, do a bit more pavement trimming and now everything runs smoothly backwards and forwards. 

I also added a lot more weight to the boxcars to really give them some heft and also help them roll through the turnouts much better. Almost ready to move to the next section which does not include any tracks in the street. It does include a bridge, a canal and a major highway crossing. Fun, fun, fun.

Well after spending countless hours building tracks in the street including two turnouts, I have come to the conclusion that the Atlas turnouts just aren't going to cut it. I am far enough along that I was able to run a loco and some cars back and forth and it all worked good except for the turnouts. I just can't get them tight enough to run cars through smoothly. So a couple of choices. Micro Engineering. Peco. Shinohara. Or handlaid. I know most of you would probably raise your hand and say handlaid. And that is a consideration.

i guess having an article to write for MRH does give you some incentive to get things done. So I have been working on Kingsbury Ave this weekend. Heres a sneak peak  at some of the work.