Laying Track - Part 3

Having the holidays fall on Monday has led to several three-day weekends, and there is nothing more fun than working on my layout. However, despite the large amount of free time I generally only find myself putting in an hour or so before taking a break. It keeps me fresh, and it allows me to work on other things too. For example, I lifted up the track leading to Southworth Tractor and spaced the ties further apart. It had been bothering me for a while, but it was pretty easy. I also adjusted the curvature of the siding a little bit to make the joint with the switch flow smoother, though this resulted in the track sticking out over the roadbed. Ballast will eventually hide this.

I then went and laid the cork for the two sidings in Keis Distributors. I needed sheet cork, but I couldn't find it at Home Depot or Lowes and the employees I asked didn't know what it was. So, I ordered it online and it arrived in time for the weekend. However, it was rolled during shipment and had a tendency to curl, which is why I used so many pins to hold it in place. The cork is thinner than the mainline roadbed, so again the sidings will be lower. It doesn't look like much now but lots of articles I have read suggest doing this. I hope once it is all sceniced and ballasted the differences in elevation will be worthwhile.

I used code 70 for the sidings. Even today (2017) the prototyle sidings are in place and in decent shape. The rails are extremely rusted and the ties are lightened from decades of sunlight, but they still look straight and level. I have been told that they were never used by Keis itself, and were only installed to get better rates from the trucking company that also serviced the plant. This might be true, though the D&H sometimes parked maintenance equipment on them. I made sure to include them in my plan even though there isn't much room for the structure itself behind it. I curved the mainline on this section away from the back edge which is somewhat prototypical, though the curve is more extreme on the layout. All this work for sidings that won't be used.

Finally, in my non-ending saga of finding the "right" brown paint for the layout I purchased some more from Lowes. Once again my wife was correct in that choosing a lighter shade is better for the basement. The adjacent picture shows the original color on the left, the second color on the right foreground section, and my final choice in the back right (Olympic Cocoa Delight - OL728.5). I avoided browns that were too red or too tan, as neither looked good to me. However, my lighting isn't great and so making things a nice dark brown just made everything look overcast. I bought and used up a quart, but now nearly everything is a uniform brown color.