Gary S Wrote:

ezdays Wrote:But now I gotta get the wiring done before we can see any trains going across... That could take another year...............

:o

How about some alligator clips from your PS to your track? Then you can at least make a maiden voyage across the bridge and transition.

I think I'll be able to get the wiring done to the point that I'll be running trains any day now.

Here we are close to the end of the challenge and I think I've got the transition finished. Still have a lot of trackwork to finish up, but I've at least ballasted and did what I intended to do with the scenery. And yes, I did get some wiring in and I can run trains over the transition, even after opening and closing the swinging section. Oh happy days....

This is where I am right now, and I'm calling it done.
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Looks great Don! Nice to see that Big Blue equipment too!
Ralph

Whoa!

Don, that's looking great! Nice job, there, Bubba!

I love the way the water swirls coming off the bridge pilings!

It's looking SUPER!

Thanks guys, although the project is done, I still have much to do on the layout, and that includes everything there that you see as brown dirt on both sides of the transition. I plan on some sort of structures there, I just want to get all the trackwork done before I take that on.

The water is two-part epoxy that I dyed a blue-green. The base underneath was painted progressively darker as it got into the deeper areas. The swirls were a result of smoothing out the final coat of epoxy as it dried.

It looks ...

Don, what kind of dye did you use in the epoxy? And was it mixed into the epoxy or just put on the top?

I like the swirls, and also like the advertisement for the forum!

Gary S Wrote:Don, what kind of dye did you use in the epoxy? And was it mixed into the epoxy or just put on the top?

I like the swirls, and also like the advertisement for the forum!

The dye I used was some stuff I bought a long time ago at a craft store for mixing in with casting resin. I mixed it in with the epoxy and used long setting stuff to give me time to get it mixed and leveled. I had two quarts of casting resin that I also bough a few years ago, but didn't realize that it has a finite shelf life, even in a sealed can. It turns out that there was enough material in the two-tube epoxy pak to do the job. The slow drying stuff ( 1 hour) stayed a bit tacky on the surface though, so I finished it off with a layer of fast-drying (5 min) stuff, which is probably why the swirls are as prominent as they are.

The car and loco I did for our first anniversary. Just wait though for what we have planned for this year's celebration.

Nice work Don.. Is that the official Big Blue inspection train?

Ya did good Don! Nice work!