The table framework has been here for a while, but I finally put the particleboard top on it a little while ago.. this is going to be the new location of Northpoint. It isn’t going to be anything exciting, just like the rest of the Extension isn’t exciting either. It’s just a typical flat land connection of the branch line with the class one main line, a runaround track with a couple of yard tracks and two or three railroad customers. But this allows creation of the town Midpoint, which will have the runaround track that is there now, but the number set out will be reduced to just one or maybe two. This will allow actual train operation with a little bit of distance between the points. I have to order some track to make this happen, but that’s coming right up.
Coincidentally, I was looking more closely this image I posted yesterday. The more I look at it, the more I think it’s an A I image. Especially with a couple of guys close up on the right.. The hats they are wearing are contemporary hats that hikers wear, and the hat on the guy on the far right looks almost like an Australian bush hat. Plus they are clean-shaven which almost no one was out there in those days. The balloon stack on the engine doesn’t look right either, it’s too skinny.
Compare to this authentic photograph-
The guy on the near left appears to be wearing a kepi and a four-button (i.e. wartime) sack coat/fatigue blouse with almost modern trousers. I don’t know where or when the pic is supposed to have been taken, but kepis were not common headgear for troops outside the Eastern theater and were not generally authorized for enlisted wear (the enlisted wore forage caps, which are fairly easily distinguished from kepis). The guy in the light clothes (and a modern-appearing jacket) halfway between our “soldier” and the engine looks to be hatless, which is extremely unlikely.
Nimbus, you asked about the Railroad customers in Woodna. Right now just about all of them are going to be removed to Northpoint when the track gets extended in there in a couple of days.
Here’s the Trashery Oil Company and the Non-Co-Op warehouse.
When I was around 5 my much older brother had a friend whose family name was Chacere, he went by his last name which I could not pronounce so I called him Trashery. They were very well off and had a nice large home next to a small oil loading facility, which always had a bunch of black UTLX tank cars spotted at it. I was convinced that Trashery owned those cars. 
The other structure is this warehouse that someone gave me. It’s pretty poorly assembled and needs a paint job, but I think I can fix it up and use it for something at Northpoint.
Here’s an identical building I fixed up years ago for a club. It was much better assembled than the one I have now. I don’t know if I can make the one I have now as nice. But. The price was right. It can go down to the floor courtesy of a nocturnal visitor, and there will be no big loss.
The GCE reaches Northpoint!
This is not the final track. The runaround track will always be there, but I may put another siding down. But. This is exactly the way I like a layout -,a layout surface with not a whole lot on it!
Looks like that’ll be a good extension to your layout! I definitely appreciate point to point layouts and the operations you can do with them much more than I did when I was younger and just wanted to watch trains go in a circle. Doing ops is a ton of fun.
I don’t doubt that some of the rivet counters and Proto modeling types are laughing at my use of Kato Unitrak and 18 inch radius curves, very sorely visible leading into Northpoint. My answer to that peanut gallery is that I’m going to be 80 years old before I know it and don’t have that much time left to put down Cork Road bed and hand laid code 70 rail on individually stained wooden ties. 18 inch radius curves are necessary to allow me every possible extra inch of tail track at either the end of the layout. And sectional track lets me operate within a few days so I can squeeze all the time I can out of this Limited life layout.
I know very well that much better track could be custom-made and larger curves would look better but in my setting this is what I need to have a usable layout for operations, and all of the operation possible in the two years or less that we will be in this house.
I’ve engineered the whole thing to be demountable and be taken with me. I may need it all to build the next layout wherever we go, and by the time Social Security tanks as we all know that it’s going to be pretty soon, I won’t have the money to buy any more stuff. I will need all of this track here, but I may not be able to use it all.
Is it the GCEE now? 
You mean the Gulf Coast Extension Extension?
The Extension of the GCE is only the the new part north of Woodna.
Today I’m operating a true Dodger from a main line interchange through an intermediate community to a point B, switching, and coming back. This is the first time since I ever started building anything down here that this has felt like a real actual Railroad. The operation envelope is very prototypical and very complete, for the first time ever.
There was a first this morning on the GCE, the first time I’ve seen this in five years of being downstairs in the open air layout area We had a very strong wind- driven rainstorm, and it pretty well wet down the new extension.
The previous existing 2/3 of the layout was not affected, it’s far enough underneath the house. But this is telling me I need to put a plywood backdrop to keep the rain off the new part. I have it. I just have to install it. And I’m gonna install it in such a way that I can hinge it up when not operating so I can let a nice breeze through on a pretty day.
Just ran an engine down onto the wet track. No effect at all. Operations can be conducted, even if the layout is wet, which it won’t be getting much longer.
This layout demands plastic road bed sectional track. No cork roadbed, individual wood ties, and hand spiked code 70 down here.
Access from the house upstairs to the layout area underneath. The Contractor that did this design for this house didn’t pay attention to my advice as a registered architect and didn’t cover the stairs very well. 
The photo you posted and wondered whether or not it was AI, it’s actually a scene from the 1924 John Ford movie, The Iron Horse.
Wow. Incredible.
Not too many railroadians in Hollywood then, I guess…
Keep in mind that quite a few still photos on the Internet have been silently “improved” by AI…
Just as a note: in less than a decade it will be twice as long between that movie and the present day as it was between the meet at Promontory Point and 1924…