Time to stop planning and time to start building....

After a lot of trial and error, the layout is where it needs to be and it's now time to move onto laying the roadbed and attaching track.  I had ordered a couple of really great structures by N Scale Architect from Internet Hobbies.  Great customer service and some seriously good prices.  Erring on the side of caution, I held off on the track install until the Eagle River Mine and the Shue Cement Company arrived.  Good thing I did!  The spur I had planned for Eagle River wasn't really needed since one side is served by an ore track (much smaller than the main line track) - more lessons learned.  Shue Cement worked out great where planned but it was still good to have the full size plan to verify.

"City Planning" for the rest of the layout relied not only on my architect's eye, but also Sheila's experience in laying out her Christmas "Village".  Much to my admiration, she didn't just line her village pieces up - she planned the layout!  It flowed & made sense.  We really like Woodland Scenics DPM line of buildings and actually have 2 or 3 already waiting in the wings.  I made some paper footprints and we spent one evening last week working our "town".  Now that we've got that worked out, it's time to mark out the track (plan on painting the track brown while in place), pull it all up and laying down the cork road bed.  Also need to do a little trimming work on the Woodland Scenics foam ramps (which are far better than the Atlas Bridge Trestles you see on the layout now).

Left Side of the Layout

Main Street

Industrial Area

Shue Cement Company

Right Side of Layout

Eagle Rive Mine Area (Foam ramp needed for track in back area)

Custom Tunnel Portal using 2 Woodland Scenics Portal Kits

Site of future custom made 130' curved bridge

I know what some folks are thinking ... seriously, a 130' curved railroad bridge.  Sure, what fantasy land do you live in.  Well, I've said it before - N Scale Net has everything.  Including, in discussions on curved bridges, a link to Vivion Chemical in Portland, OR.  Using the reference & Google Map - there it was & I was able to "walk" all around it thanks to Google Maps street walking function.  Here's a shot of what will be the sample for our bridge:

Vivion Chemical - Portland, OR

At the same time we build this bridge for our layout, we'll add a little jazz to the Atlas Plate Girder bridge that's already in place on the layout.  It's a little technique I learned form my buddy (and professional model builder extraordinaire) Charles Kendrick.  I can only hope to hit about 50% of his talent level!

So there you have it.  Time to log off the lessons learned blog and get back to work ..........