It may not be as long as it should be, but my reversing section is the straigh bit running close to parallel to the one long side.
I don’t get out much, else I would check the local feed store. Instead i will likely order some balast.
It’s probably too late by now, but before you glue that track down you really ought to paint it. There’s hundreds of videos about how to do it by all kinds of people with “retentive” personalities who paint every tie differently with a brush, but I have to say that my age I don’t have enough years left on earth to use that kind of time up on something you don’t even look at much when the train is running.
I found that spray painting track with a nice flat. Brown really does the job for me. After you get that basic coat on, you can go back and color individual ties if you want, but I’ve been perfectly happy with just the spray coat. It really makes the height of the rail less obvious and goes a long way towards realism. About the only thing you have to be careful about is wiping top of the rail clean after you paint it, and masking off the half inch or so of track around switch points and touch it up with a brush so spray paint doesn’t get all down in there it and mess operation up. Ask me, I know, I did that wrong and I’m still suffering.
Here is some Kato Unitrak with just one light dusting of flat brown, the plastic frogs and ties and even made the grey plastic ballast pretty acceptable to me.
Here are some unpainted and painted code 100 atlas snap track. Look at the difference!
You can still spray paint the track even if it’s fastened down on the layout already. You’ll have to cover the overspray along the side with scenery or ballast or paint or something, and you may not always be able to paint the backside of the track that you don’t really see very well. But painting track is one of the best tasks I ever found to push realism on the layout a long way forward.
Patrick. It’s never too late fo mess with this until it is too late for any and all.. I am not quite ready to fasten the track down since I am waiting on a shipment of track bed. Meanwhile, I had been thinking it wouldn’t hurt to paint the plywood “ground”.
Painting track should also minimize the differing appearance due to mu using three different types of track; nickel silver, steel, and brass.
Keep in mind that this is my opportunity to develop some basic skills. Come November I may tear it apart and enlarge things a bit. However, I don’t plan on ever building some of the beautiful and elaborate layouts as do may of you. This is something I can set up in the living room on temporary supports.
As is, it rests on two sawhorses.Later I may make it an “L” shape with the addition of a 3 x 5 section. If so I will cobble together a semipermanent supporting frame.
If I do so, I have plans of using several sections of flex track and laying some foam over thinner sections of plywood. The thinner wood should reduce weight. Weight is important to me as I have to be able to break it all down and store the sections in the garage. To do so, I plan on cutting the 8x4 in to two sections.
This is painstaking, but kind of fun.
Thanks for the suggestions.
We have a second house over in Mississippi, where I don’t have room inside for a layout. It has to be in a covered outdoor airspace under the house. There are many environmental limitations because of this, and that coupled with the projected two or three year lifespan of this layout means it’s going conceptually be something like yours.
Roving night critters jump up on the layout all the time during the night and patrol. Therefore, I can’t leave out any rolling stock or any kind of structures that have any kind of value. So the most scenery I’m going to have is going to be cheap plastic structures, painted plywood surface with ground foam glued down, and loose lichen placed around. It’s not so bad because I presumably am replicating the Gulf Coast Prairie, where my family lived for so many years.
Here’s a scene that more or less represents about all I can do down there. Some of the ground foam is down already, some not. The lichen is just laying loose. If one of God‘s creatures decides to have lunch with it, I’ll just replace it.
Here’s two views of where the two 2x8 sections meet:
It is not known to very many that the Rock Island ran all the way down almost to the Gulf in Louisiana. Therefore, I run Rock Island stuff from time to time on this layout.
Everything is very simple on this layout. The four vertical oil tanks are cookie cans that were cut in half and painted gray. No big loss if some raccoon or feral cat decides to knock them across the space.
Some have said to me, “I would never have a layout in such a space”. Well, when all you have is such a space, the choice is either a layout or no layout.