Stevenville – Ballast and Grass
I got the urge last Friday evening to try to finish up the scenery work in Stevenville. As usual, I went to the layout room with the intention of doing one thing and ended up doing something completely different. Unfortunately, I can’t remember what I originally went down there for!
Anyway, I started by trying to find a wall wart to power the neon “Cafe” sign I have. I couldn’t find one that put out 3 volts. I figured a fascia mounted switch on the battery pack would be almost as good. I did that and put the cafe back into place. Flicked on the switch and NOTHING. I tried it and the @#@# sign didn’t work. I mucked around with it for a while and determined I must have done something to the EL panel while try to get the wires and building into position. Crap! I will eventually get another one from Miller Engineering. BTW – They have some amazing lighting products!
So, the next thing I decided to tackle was finishing the ballast through Stevenville. I figured that would be less frustrating. I was right. Months ago I had ballasted about 1/2 the main line through town and after about an hour I had the rest of the mainline ballasted and a bit of grass along the tracks beside the tenement and down to the service shed (from the tan truck along the tracks back). While I was working in the area I put some more secure end of track devices (railway ties sunk in the ground) at G-Mac – the blue building at the left. That was it for a busy Friday evening. Sorry about the bottles and tools in the pictures.
After spending the whole day cutting stuff for Kim to tole paint I got back to work on Stevenville in the evening. The picture above shows the passenger siding ballasted, but I didn’t do that until Saturday evening. I started some scenery around the buildings on Front Street.
This will probably be one of those times when I am temporarily obsessed with this project and will work at it every available moment until it’s done, or I get sidetracked with something else. I’ll likely have more Stevenville updates soon.
Scott
