Took some time to doodle up a schematic for the dispatcher and probably crews to use for the future operating sessions on the HBR.  I still need to add car capacities at the various sidings and spurs.  What else do people have on their schematic maps for their crews and dispatchers?

Needing a break from track laying, I decided it was time to add some weight to some recent purchases. I was inspired by the discussions about adding weight to cars elsewhere on MRH -  http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/22784 as an example of recent discussions.

One of my side interests is railway slides.  I have amassed quite a few over the years, and an offshoot of this is trying to find locations that were shot in the past and see how they look now.  An ongoing "project" is finding locations in the Vancouver area related to the historic BC Electric streetcar and interurban services that were shut down in 1958. 

The main trackwork at the smelter is completed.  I took advantage of a much needed rainy weekend.  Usually we are drowning here in BC, but it has been bone dry for the past couple of months and the water reservoirs are starting to get a bit low.  My lawn and garden are particularly glad to get the moisture.  

I stumbled across a bunch of old photos from my teen years and found this gem:

I consider this to be my first "serious" layout, I think it was the first one I had after the initial oval of track as a kid.  This was from about 1983 or 1984 if memory serves me.

Thanks to my friend Doug H. I now have 15 sheets of 3mm cork to use as roadbed for my smelter yard and the future yard in The Pas.  I have been looking at options for the track layout and am thinking that we are getting close to having a final arrangement for the smelter.  A few shots below in a separate post.

While I wait for some sheet cork to continue laying the yard tracks and other areas of the smelter, it was time to mock up some additional smelter buildings and see how they might work in the space.  This is the first area of the layout with any significant structures.  I hope to capture the “industrial menace” of the smelter, although the menace part of the equation may have to wait until it is more than just plain cardboard.

It has been a while since my last update on the layout so here is a quick review of what I have been doing.  As the title suggests, it has been a bit of slow going.  For those not familiar with muskeg, it is swampy, wet and muddy and usually very challenging to make progress through.  There is a lot of it in northern Manitoba, and people in my profession (geologist) are intimately familiar with the challenges of getting through it. 

Previously I have expressed concern about trains driving into the abyss when my drop bridge wasn't in place.  I prefer to have a physical barrier as this will stop a train dead in its tracks (pardon the pun) instead of an electrical solution, as much because I am not much of an electrician as anything else.  I expect my kids to be running trains occasionally so child proof is important as well. 

NOTE: If you read the forum thread about this you can skip this blog post as it won't have too much new information.

Over the past couple of weeks I have been mulling over how to cross the doorway to the layout room.  I posted a question to the forums about techniques and got some good feedback.  I figure I should also add something to the blog about how things are going since this is part of the building progress.