The planned southern terminus of my layout is Toledo, OH, a plausible place for me to be able to place a lake freighter. However, HO scale lake boats are not very easy to come by and tend to be expensive. Enter Scalescenes.com, a UK paper model site with digital downloads, much like Clever Model here in the US. Last year, they released a OO modern cargo ship which caught my eye, as it is somewhat close to a lake boat in appearance: long and narrow. Before I go making alterations, I figured I should do a “dry run,” building the ship to spec. 

Seeing as my son's bedroom layout is more fully functioning than mine, I figured it's time to test out/brush up my scenery skills. One of his frequent requests has been for a tunnel. I had acquired some 2" foam boards and Woodland Scenics foam tack glue for a now defunct 4x8, as well as some Chooch tunnel portals that were on clearance when the original Caboose Hobbies was closing out their inventory.

Finally carved out a niche for my own work space. The tiny corner of my basement that I'd been using as my music room has a nice sunlit egress window that provides me light and somewhere to vent spray booth fumes, as well as nice ceiling recessed can lights for after dark. My wife decided to redo the corner of the family room that holds all her photography stuff, which made available a nicely sized piece of countertop with a backsplash. And the recent acquisition of a new bookshelf for the bedroom made two smaller bookshelves available as bases.

The first step to adding the Peco inspection pit to the Bachmann car shop was to glue up the basic pit.  First, removal of the extra tabs on the two end pieces.

The pit glues up nicely.  You'll see that the pit has molded in rail clips, and the car shop floor has molded in rail guides:

Time to snap out of my analysis paralysis.  A number of years ago, I acquired a Bachmann Plus Car Repair Shop kit off of the Bay.  For those of you who may be unfamiliar, it's a 3-bay metal barn with large skylights in the roof and molded-in track grooves in the base to add your favorite flavor of rail.  I had purchased it with the intent of using it for a small shelf layout with the premise of a shortline operating over UP and BNSF tracks in northern Colorado.