Southern Pacific's Jefferson Branch

[ratled]

Well here is a little surprise
I pulled out my old PK2 SD9s that I haven't seen in well over 10 years to see about getting them up and running again.  Once I got the decoders sorted out I was surprised it ran at all.  I tore it all down to give it a good cleaning and lube and found the original factory "peanut butter" in the gears.  I was amazed it was even pliable enough to allow the gears to move.  This must have been a new in the box unit to still have that in there so it's probably 15 - 20 years old now!     Its all soaking in IPA bath for the night………..



I added a small portable AC unit to the layout room.  While the layout room is fully insulated in the summer months we can easily get over a 100 (the winter highs of 30).  I installed a 5” dryer style through the wall vent for the portable AC unit. The upside is it will do double duty for the spray booth using a PVC step down adapter for the 4” spray booth hose.  







The other day I used up a can ground black pepper and remembered from wayyyyyy back a DIY Throttle Holder version 1.0 using ground pepper cans so I played off that and used it for the AC remote. 
It will also hold my old cell phone that is only used as a throttle.



I mocked up a tunnel portal that leads to the rest of the world. The mock up gives me a nice idea of scale and perspective. It also shows the turnout that was supposed to be just in front of the tunnel doesn't work. That's ok as it is just the wrong execution of a good idea, or at least a good consideration.





I also started painting the track now that the spray booth fully running. Not that the track will go in the booth but I'll use the booth to help circulate air out the layout room.  Going with the popular Rust-Oleum camo dark earth brown from a rattle can.  One thing new to me I tried this time is instead of taping off the points on the turnouts I just blocked the open side really well.  Worked like a champ and I will use this if I ever have to paint turnouts again.   I painted the track with 2 lite coats and while the paint was still wet I used left over cork roadbed to clean the top of the rails.



Prior to painting, the track was cleaned well using mineral spirits (MS) and a shop towel wrapped around a piece of cork.  I used a small airbrush bottle to dispense the MS



The little bridge for Placer Creek is built. I still need to give it a coat of creosote to get closer to the two tone look in the picture. I'll give it a little weathering too but it's the first thing on the layout that isn't a place holder or mock up.



I started playing around with colors for the backdrop. John on his Cascade Sub ( Cascade Sub YT chan ) was doing stunning work a while ago on his backdrops and was kind enough to share his paint colors with me.

I used these as a starting point to see what works on my layout. I wanted to see a few samples based off of those colors and put this little chart together. I really liked the green so I used that in all of my samples. I did the first one (left) using my sky blue color, the last one (right) is John's blue and the middle is a 50/50 mix of the two blues.





I'm closing in on what ballast is going to be used and should have that finalized soon.... but that will be for later