This is a photo of my SP California branchline.  It is a freelance layout designed by my friend, "Mountaingoat" Greg Baker.   He designed it in 2001 and I have been working on it twelve years.   It has a fifty foot mainline in a 12'x14' room.

and a 3.1% grade.   It is "sort of" done for now.

The locos are Genesis GP9's.

I have a friend who has passed away, and I am helping his widow dismantle and sell off his model railroad collection.  I would like to salvage the track however half of it has ballast installed.  I have no idea what he used to glue it down.  Though from what I remember, it was glued back in the mid 1980s, so I presume it would either be matte medium or diluted white glue.  Does anyone have a "magic potion" to break down the ballast so i can remove the track safely without damaging it? 

Thanks.

Ken L.

In a recent Weekly Photo Fun thread, a couple people asked about the snow fencing in my Bluffs enginehouse scene.  I wrote that that fencing was made by a friend from the Yahoo Proto-Layouts list, Randy O'Brien, by applying a solvent to plastic window screen material, hammering it flat, and then painting it orange.