This weekend’s fun beyond dinner and a movie with my wife and the usual kid’s activities included more work on the staging yard.  Last week it was re-gauging the 3 way turnout (see http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/25448 ),  and running passenger and freight trains through the yard throat at ridiculous speeds to see where any problems might be.   My philosophy is that if I can run a 6 car passenger train through trackage at full throttle with no issues, the test is passed. 

Spend several hours trying to create an illusion of a cane field. After three separate sessions of frustration it has about 24" of sugar cane. There has to be a better way than planting a few stalks at a time and certainly end up looking more realistic. First my effort with some wet backdrop paint:

And a photo of some real sugar can fields for comparison:

I began wiring a few blocks on the railroad. Following strict guidelines learned from reading other modelers problems, I took the leap of faith and started the wiring. Each block was tested during the wiring phase (20ga feeders twisted onto the 12ga buss) and no shorts were detected. After each block was deemed successful, I soldered all the feeders to the their bus.