Topic: Progress Reports
The lapse of nearly two months since my previous Journal entry is neither because we have been doing nothing nor because we have been too busy. It just hasn't seemed there has been anything which is news worthy. Let's face it, ballasting track is not that exiciting. Poking a hole and putting a tree in it is hardly an innovation. Nor is paving a bit of street or covering a parking lot with "crushed rock". Scratch building a simple silo for the cement plant is not a major undertaking. While not found on every layout, employing a diode matrix to control turnouts has been around for a long time. These are the things, however, which have been consuming our time. Still, when taken together, these efforts are having an impact upon the layout.
The first area to see a new growth of trees was behind the roundhouse in Jefferson. But immediately more trees sprouted across the tracks, on up the hill, and into the Jefferson Heights residential area. These trees shortly were followed by more trees around the plastic foam factory. Additional trees popped up in front of and behind the yard tracks to the east.
A few vehicles appeared on the steets of Jefferson and a couple people came to the station to await the arrival of Amtrak. (It will be a long wait of course.) Suddenly Jefferson is taking on the look of place where people might be living. It is really fun to watch a train disappear and then again emerge from behind trees as it passes through Jefferson. The movement of the train through town now is much more of an event.
The growth of trees spread beyond Jefferson to Osage Ridge. Of course there have been thousands of trees covering Osage Ridge for quite some time. But the trunks of these new trees can be seen; not just their tops. These new growth trees blend nicely with the older background ones. Trees are not the only new additions. Ballasting track and surfacing parking lots had preceded the trees. Not so quickly evident perhaps as the trees, these ground covers are the literal foundation which divides the imagined world of our layouts from the reality of plaster, foam, and metal of which it is built. The new ground covers and new trees are much in evidence around the lead smelter.
The trees at the lower corner of the lead smelter separate it from the large yard on the right side of Osage Ridge. They also screen the edge of the layout and frame the scene helping to give this large complex new importance. Several structures in Mound City can still be seen rising above the trees, but they now seem more distant and don't compete with the smelter for attention.
Newly planted trees create a visual link between the tiny village of Anton and the tree-covered slopes of Osage Ridge. The "crushed rock" now covering the parking areas surrounding the buildings also makes the scene more complete.
Not all of the activity has been restricted to trees and ballast. Just to the west of Jefferson I finally got around to working on the cllinker silo for the the cement factory. This silo (the gray structure to the right of the kiln) receives the hot clinker products from the rotating kiln. The clinkers cool and are stored in the silo. As needed, they move to the processing building where they are pulverized and additional materials added to produce the final cement powder.
Further west in the mountains, I colored the remaining rock castings which are located behind the town of Nighthawk. With that done I added grassy ground cover to the mountainside. I have also begun casting stone retaining walls since taking this picture. There are a number of these retaining walls forming the terraces which allow the buildings to cling to the steep mountainside.
Below the mountains the first of our turnout control panels had appeared. Whereas the MK&P is a large and somewhat complex layout, it could be difficult for visiting operators to determine which turnouts might be required to navigate a particular route. Turnout controls are designed therefore to allow an operator to select a route rather than setting individual turnouts. This simple choice can move as many as four turnouts. Because it wouldn't be a good idea to have push buttons capable of redirecting turnouts accessable to all our visitors, operators will have detachable plugs to make the electrical contact controlling turnout functions.
Oh yes, one other thing we have been up to. We've made some changes in the non-layout areas of Augusta Station. A number of new products have been added in the gift shop and we didn't have anywhere to put them. We salvaged some shelving from another shop in town, made major modifications, and then painted the rebuilt shelfs. The new shelves are already filled, but now we can dispaly all of our products.
One new product merited a special display. It is a new line of wooden trains compatible with the Thomas Tank Engine wooden railway. By employing Doug's excellent carpentry and my layout design skills, we produced a new play table for our smaller visitors in the exhibit area.
