I’ll be sure to watch the update after work today! Can’t wait!
Well that’s an issue I’ve never had to worry about when building a layout! 
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Good update, Mark. You continue to make progress.
Oh, and I like the shirt. 
Rich
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Accounts Payable Clerk. Love it! 
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Thanks for all the comments, everybody! Rich, I’m glad the shirt meets with your approval. 
I guess it’s about time for another photo update. Didn’t realize it had been nearly a month since the last one!
5 March 2025
I converted the Proto 2000 SD7 to DCC. I took the same steps on that as I did on the SD9, so I won’t repeat it here. What I did is in my last photo update above.
On February 18th I put together a video on how I solved the derailing problem near the Casper west yard turnout:
I also did just a little bit of scenery work at Powder River - more clean-up than anything. The area between the mainline and the siding was coming off the base, so I took a scraper and vigorously chipped away everything that was at all loose:
I vacuumed up all the debris. Hopefully this month before the operating session I’ll get that area reworked. If I’m especially ambitious, I might even get ballast applied past the end of the spur! (Don’t hold your breath).
I added steam generator details to the short hood the SD9. If I really wanted to pump myself up I could say I even scratchbuilt some of the details. All I really did beyond attaching details to the hood that came with the model was cut and install a short piece of wire to represent a pipe that protrudes through the hood (oh yeah, I also painted the wire. Impressed? ).
Late in the month I installed the Crown Cork & Seal siding in Worland. To do this I had to install a few square feet of new subroadbed:
Then I laid out the siding, decided I didn’t like it and added more subroadbed and laid it out again. I finally came up with this:
On March 1st I laid the track. It was wired on the 3rd.
The curves in this siding are very tight, as is prototypical. Here’s the actual siding:
That’s a screenshot from Google Maps.
No road locos will be able to enter the siding because of the tight radius, so operators will have to use their trains as “handles” to deliver and retrieve cars from Crown Cork.
The last few days I’ve been assembling Proto 2000 tank cars.
And that’s it!
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Thanks for the photos and video, Mark! You are able to accomplish so much!
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Everything looks great, Mark. If and when you finish this layout, what are you going to do with all of your spare time?
Ruch
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@Pruitt I’m curious what the track is in the images of your siding that has sidewalls and heads off the bench? A future tunnel?
Thanks Rich. I’ll be dead before I get this thing done - unless I become one of the 150-year-old Social Security recipients!
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No, that’s just sidewalls on the mainline to prevent anything from falling to the floor until there is scenery there to catch it. That line continues on around to the town of Basin on the other side of the backdrop.
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LOL. You and 3.4 million others, Mark.
Rich
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30 March 2025
I spent a week in March adding a few tank cars to the layout. I’m still woefully short of these (but I have quite a few kits on hand to build). I put together two of these Conoco cars (two different road numbers) in February then didn’t include them in the last update:
And a few weeks ago I finished four additional cars like this one.
All six of these are Proto 2000 kits (not the Timesaver versions) so they each took about four hours to complete. They’re well detailed, but a lot of the small pieces are very fragile. Fortunately, Life-Like provided extra grab irons in each kit.
Those four tank cars took most of the first two weeks in March, then I switched to scenery around Powder River.
I taped off the mainline and added tile grout ground cover to the area between the mainline and siding, and also covered the siding since it was laid in the dirt.
It took several applications of grout to build it up around the ties, but in the end it looked like this:
I’ll clean off the tops of the ties with the edge of a Brite Boy, then weather the siding. Following that will be some muddy wet spots between the tracks, then some sparse static grass and weeds. I want to to look something like the area to the right of the boxcar (minus the snow) when I’m done:
Then I’ll ballast the mainline and add additional weeds and sagebrush.
I continued a ways around the curve toward Shobon with the tile grout:
I’m going to slowly (very slowly most likely) continue on around and work my way into Wind River Canyon with some hopefully finished scenery there. May be years, though.
I took a few overall views of different areas of the layout.
This is looking at Powder River, Riverton and Casper (and East Staging) from the top of the Owl Creek Mountains (top of the Wind River Canyon mountain):
And this is looking at the Basin / Worland peninsula from above the Lander backdrop:
In between bouts of grout placement at Powder River, I removed a section of Lander benchwork and narrowed it by about 2 1/4 inches. The Lander benchwork makes it hard to read road numbers on cars at the back of the yard in Greybull - cars on the adjacent tracks nearer the aisleway block the view. I’m hoping narrowing the Lander benchwork a bit will alleviate the problem.
I removed the aisle stringer on the center section, then removed and shortened the joists. Here’s the joist reinstallation underway:
And here’s the completed, narrowed section:
Then I clamped some sheet styrene to the stringer to simulate the fascia that will be installed there some day.
I wanted to get feedback from operators at the 25th of March Operating Session as to whether I needed to narrow the benchwork a bit more (I can go about another inch and a half without impacting Lander too significantly) before doing the end section, but I had to cancel the Operating Session after I had a disagreement with a ladder.
I ordered Starlink about a month ago. I started installing it on the 14th. The antenna went up on the roof just fine, and I got it functional later that day. The router was under a plastic bin on the back porch temporarily, while I routed the wire. It took several days to route it because the wind was pretty strong for a few days (a calm day in Casper is wind under 20 mph). On the 19th I was moving the extension ladder when it got away from me and fell to the ground, dragging me with it. Barked my right shin real good. Left one too, but not so hard.
Nothing broken, so I soldiered on, ignoring the pain in my right shin. Later that evening I was in the train room making sure all the equipment was where OperationsPro thought it was (a few pieces always wind up out of place after a session). Other than some throbbing in my shin I was fine.
The next morning I could barely get around! Right foot hurt like - well, you know. All I could do that day was hobble from the recliner to the bathroom and back. Friday was even worse - now my right hip felt like a bit of sciatica was kicking up! Again, hobble to the bathroom and back to the chair - all day.
Saturday dawned and I still didn’t feel up to moving around much, so I reluctantly postponed the operating session for three weeks, moving it from March 25th to April 15th. There was no way I could finish preparations for the session with the days I’d already lost.
Other than a huge scab that’s slowly healing I’m back to normal (is that a good thing?) and working on the layout again.
By the way, I did finish the Starlink install.
One of my operators, Steve from Evanston, came up and spend the day with me on March 27th (my birthday - 69!), and helped me install a couple of LED T5 lighting fixtures (he brought those with him) under Douglas. Here’s Steve drilling a hole in the Hudson benchwork to attach one of the mounting clips:
And here’s the area with the two fixture installed and lit up. BIG improvement! You can see all the unfinished stuff much better now!
I’ve ordered a dozen additional lights. Two will light Powder River, and several others will light Greybull after the Lander subroadbed is installed. There will be a few more that will light Cody when it’s built.
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Great photos! It sounds like a lot of progress. Thanks for posting.
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A belated Happy Birthday!!!
I’ve also noticed that I don’t bounce, or heal as quickly as I once did.
Keep up the Good Work.
Cheers, the Bear. 
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Thanks York1, Bear!
I just posted my latest update video:
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Thanks for the video, Mark! Hope you’re feeling better.
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Thanks, York1!
Did anyone find that short, cheesy “Model Railroad Heaven” bit near the front of the video offensive in any way? One person over at MRH did apparently, which makes me wonder if anyone else did.
Nope, just having fun is all I can see here. I appreciate the work you do in taking the time to shoot, edit and produce these videos. I find them helpful and entertaining.
Thanks, Ed
Offensive? No, not me. If you read any of the Diner posts, you might be able to tell I’m a Bible-believing Christian, attending church each week, and not just for the donuts. I didn’t see anything wrong – it’s all in good fun. Minor Deity!!
