I added a little gold paint onto a track spike and a commemorative note to mark the acheivement. While there is still plenty of work to put in sidings and switches, the mainline, staging yards, and returns are complete and trains can run continuously from Duluth to Two Harbors, then sneak around the "back way" to be ready once more.

I've gotten the hang of putting down ME c55 flextrack. Took me about 8 hours to get the first 15' of handlaid track down. It's taken me less than six hours to install about 24' of flex. You can see the spot in the middle of each section of track with 20 ga. feeders soldered to the bottom web of each rail. Code 55 is really too short to hide feeders attached to the sides well. Man, those ME rail joiners are a pain in the butt, tho.

The track crew (me) has been hard at work putting down handlaid code 55 track. The crew has gotten from Two Harbors to Knife River in the past few days. I've used up my wood ties, and I have another hundred feet or so of mainline that will be laid with ME c55 flex track.

The real Lakefront Division was completed in 1886 as a requirement for the D&IR to satisfy the conditions of the land grant they received from the state. It ran for 26 scenic miles along the north shore of Lake Superior from Duluth to Two Harbors, MN.

I finished the benchwork the other day - just about five weeks, start to finish on the 15'x17' lakefront division between Duluth and Two Harbors. Now I'm putting down homasote and using it as an opportunity to do a little stress testing. Gluing the homasote needs some weight... Probably not this much:

We redid our basement floors a few years ago and I ended up with about 30' of unused 3/4" oak quarter-round baseboard trim. I have since chopped it up into 3" lengths for cleats on each of the risers. I cut a few extra long cleats to allow for clearance in awkward locations where the riser won't fit right below the roadbed. 

I guess it shows the benefit of thinking out an idea for a long time. Just a mere five weeks ago it was an unused basement corner, now it almost looks like a layout.

Then:

And now:

The splines are almost done. They still need to be sanded and re-leveled, but it actually looks like something resembling a railroad. You can see the 20" radius curves made using the form jig. They need to be cut and fit into place, too.

'The rolls of kraft paper have the full size track plans for reference as I put the splines in.

Norm Abrams always said, "you can never have enough clamps." I would agree.  Especially when building spline roadbed. 

I have decided to jump back into the hobby with both feet last month, after a nine year hiatus. Life is what happens to you while making other plans, I guess. This will be my ninth layout that I've built either myself or as part of a group. The most recent one was intended to be a shelf type layout around the walls. Made of MDF boxes that sat on standard double-wide shelf brackets. This only made it to the sub-roadbed stage before new jobs for my wife and I, plus two different houses put it under the landfill equivalent of the scrappers torch.