These pictures were taken awhile ago as work continues with the installation of the sub-roadbed for the Southbound low level track.  Only the mainline is shown here as the sidings will be added seperately as part of the next step.

Here's another view showing the progress.  I've actually reached a milestone as I cut through the wall into the expansion area!  More later.

My latest fun on the alcove expansion is making over 40 risers with cleats. The picture below is a pile of them with half being 12" long and half 18" long.  The risers are 1 x 3's and the cleats are 1 x 2 x 6".  I glued the cleats onto the risers with yellow glue clamping them while I nailed in to finishing nails to hold everything together while the glue dried.

I'm reaching the point of completion / abandonment of the Henderson Building; that is, I'm close to finishing it, but sick of working on it.  It is at this point that I put it on the shelf and let it age while I start another structure with the hopes of returning to do the final finish before putting it on the layout.

Work continues on the Henderson Building that will find a home in the Hoovertown downtown expansion.  This building will be viewed from approximately three feet - thus the "good enough" principal when it comes to finish.  The ground floor store front is occupied by Pelletier Travel.  The window printing is printed backwards on the rough side (required for printing) of 3M(tm) transparency film.  The travel posters in the windows are printed on card stock that is bowed (curved) to fill the windows and open at the top to allow light from the "light pole"

The work continues on the expansion of the layout into the alcove area and I've recently installed the joists on the L-girders.  The weights are on the benchwork at the right are there because of a nasty twist caused by warped lumber.  Once I attached the benchwork to the floor it won't be a problem.

My last post to this blog showed the removal of existing benchwork from the alcove area in preparation for installation of the new expanded layout.  In this post I'll share the construction of the benchwork.  Some of you may wonder why with such narrow benchwork that I just didn't attach a "shelf" style construction to the walls.  The answer is two fold: 1.) The left wall is 1/2" drywall attached to 1 X 4's that are attached to the concrete wall with "shot" in concrete nails and I don't trust their holding power for anything other than drywall; and 2.

It's not quite a "smash and burn", but it did involve a little demo!

I recently extended my alcove area by adding 7ft in depth and have been putting off removing the existing track because .....well, because then I can't run my railroad!  I needed to salvage the benchwork and track for reuse outside my trainroom once the alcove new benchwork and trackwork is installed and running through the wall.

Today I took the leap and got the job done - now I need to hurry to get the railroad operating again!

I recently completed a shack for the foreground area "redo" by Hoovertown and since it's in a rual area it needed a little "comfort"  The first picture shows the outhouse in relation to the shack - not too far away, and not too close!

This is a closeup picture - all the comforts of home (there's a Sears catalog inside next to the seat).

Here's a way to curve hardboard for your fascia or walls - both inside & outside curves:

I recently added curved (coved) corners in the train room addition using the "brute force" method. I took flat hardboard 4' x 8' x 3/16" panels and forced them into the corner. This was an extremely difficult and frustrating method. I'm getting ready to cove a corner in the expansion area and decided to use a curving method that I had used previously on some fascia board they worked very well. Here are the steps (refer to the picture below):

Recently one of my beloved locos (the first loco I ever purchased) let out the "magic smoke" and no longer operated.  It was a U28b Proto 2000(tm) w/ DCC & Sound.  It was originally a GE demo loco #302 painted all black.  A good friend of mine (Bob) did a custom repaint on the loco in L&N gray (No 2509) and added weathering.  He did an excellent job and I definately want that loco running on my layout.