I had an old Diamond Scale turntable bridge and spur gear salvaged from a layout many years ago. The original hydrocal pit was long gone so I decided to make a new one from wood. I spoke to Nils at Diamond Scale and he is sending be the worm gear and a few other odds and ends. Here's a couple of progress pics:

The track plan for the new project is attached, would appreciate any suggestions for structures, scenes, etc. It's David Meek's basic idea with the existing 2X8 ft section of the old layout added to it...

A couple of shots of the original layout under construction, the colors in the snapshots are weird, it looked better in person :-)

Starting a new project; I built a modest 4X8 ft. HO scale railroad about 15 years ago, my second. Major inspiration came from Malcolm Furlow's San Juan Central project featured in MR magazine in the eighties. The concept was a freelanced  standard-gauge shortline with a narrow-gauge feel. Although I'm a fan of the D&RGS Narrow gauge prototype I already owned some standard gauge power and rolling stock so it was a virtual narrow-gauge effort.