Thanks John, Tin Can II!
26 September 2023
The last couple weeks have seen progress and a near disaster.
At the end of the last update I was working on the lead into West Staging. Because of it’s location under Casper, it would be very difficult to build the lead in place, so I built it in the open and mounted it later. Here’s the final section of subroadbed that leads to the staging yard itself, ready for track. It’s late on the 10th of September.
On the 11th I added track, then worked the new section under Casper and mated it to the already-placed section under Douglas.
I had the section sitting on plastic bins for temporary support, but I crawled under Casper and installed the permanent supports a couple days later. I was very careful to set the grade properly on this track, since it will be hard to work on later.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could sit comfortably on a step stool under the layout without being hunched over. It made installing the roadbed supports much easier than I thought it would be.
On the 15th I backed a long train down the entire lead to make sure the trackwork was up to par. The yard, which I’ll build in the garage and then move into place in sections, will start just behind the waycar (caboose) to the right of this photo.
If you look close, you can see where the pre-attached feeders are dangling just beyond the second support from the camera. These will be attached to the Staging power buss, which I haven’t run under Casper yet. I’ll have to do that soon.