My long term goals in order are

1. Reconfigure the woodchip lot by adding multiple conveyors and transfer towers
2. Find/make a wrap-around, free-hanging backdrop for a consistent background.
3. Add animated truck lift and bulldozer to completed woodlot.

  The photo below attests to the very slow progress made on all these goals, yet progress it remains!

The Track Dept. informed us that the main interlocking will be out of service for the rest of the morning at least...  Perhaps it would be a good time to take the yard vehicle and give the new conductor trainee a tour of the mill.

  We'll start with the woodlot.

Its always a unique experience when you work with the same locomotive on your day job as the one you model at home.  While its always tricky to capture the correct angle one would get from a ground perspective, I tried to match them as much as possible in the following images...

  Some incremental progress on the layout as a whole.  As mentioned in the previous post, some major trackwork was necessary for operations to continue in any reasonable manner.  Namely, I had to elevate the crossing tracks about a half inch above the roadway to eliminate a peak in the rail joints that was causing all sorts of mayhem.

  As work was ongoing, I took the opportunity to rearrange the office structures around the main entrance.  I also made some progress in replacing the manual snap switches with caboose industries hand-throws.

  Time to fix a long overdue track elevation issue that has been affecting operations since the beginning...

  Both tracks out of service...

  It may be difficult to appreciate how much walking is involved in rail operations.  In fact, this may be even more so in modern operations ever since they got rid of the buggies (cabooses) and eliminated the front and rear end brakeman, and moved the conductor to the head end. Yet reverse movements still need to be protected so on road trains, this often means the conductor has to walk the length of the train multiple times.  

This was way funnier the first time I wrote it.  But for some reason after I checked the preview and it asked me if I wanted to use a previously saved version, it erased everything I did...

  So I'll just have to let the pictures do the talking...

 My apologies for the rather sloppy yet aptly named "First Post".  I was simply looking for a way to post a short bio and layout overview before I participated in the forum, but I only had a short few minutes of spare time to use my phone and I never expected people would actually read and make helpful comments already!  So thank you!