Work has paused on the warehouse for now, as I've been arranging track on the corner board that will bring the branch and the main lines into the interchange yard.

This should give you (rather blurry) ideas as to how things will be laid out. Top of the photo is the location of Creole Cuisine, and bottom right is the space where the locomotive facilities and RIP track will go.



Next, I thought I'd try my hand at some laser cut wood kits to go in the street running section. An hours work today has seen them primed and the basic shells assembled on two American Model Builders kits - the two story section house and the 3 pack of company houses. The company houses will be getting a lot more work to get them to resemble examples of small houses along the famous street running section of 4th Street, Gretna, LA.



More work to come tomorrow

Good to see your hard at it!!

Busy little bee!

I've primed the parts of my third laser cut wood kit, a gas station, and will be assembling that on my lunch break this afternoon.

Pictures to come after then, naturally!

Today's update. Not bad for an hours work, especially considering the awful instructions with the kit.

Not much of an update today, but things are progressing, even if it's only at a snails pace.

I've been working on the two story section house, and it now looks like this:




This morning I spent ten minutes giving my GP40 a quick once over with some Tamiya "soot" weathering powder to tone it down somewhat. Needs a lot more work, but it's a start.

Small update for today. I've been painting houses!

looking good daniel , just a thought have you tried Gary60's buildings ? I dont know if hes on this forum but try Nscale.net , you'll find a lot of downloadable print yourself buildings -( you may have to regester the site ) , i have built the church .

alan

Thanks.

I've tried Gary's buildings, they are immensely useful tools.

Small update for today, as I have nothing to show for the moment - too many small jobs done to show anything off yet.

HOWEVER!

Cane River has been accepted into the NMRA Calder Northern Group exhibition in Crewe on Sunday October 5th. The event runs all weekend, however there was a slot free for the Sunday so I offered the layout and was kindly accepted.

Short notice, but if any forum members local to the area are free, feel free to pop over and say hello! Bring some DCC locos if you fancy having a go!

nice offer Daniel , but I'm afraid your too far south from sunny Redcar , hope all goes well for you and the layout .

alan

I'll make sure there's plenty of photos/videos taken on the day

For now though, a quick update: Last night saw a lot of jobs crossed off the list, not a lot left to do and a week to do it in. Easy!

Current work in progress job is the houses for the street running section. Still need to add the trim to the corners and roof edges, as well as some different chimneys to what is included in the kit. Finally they'll need concrete beams adding as a foundation, and then I'll be adding a porch to each of them to give them more of a Louisiana feel.

For work in progress, they don't look too bad, I don't think.

This weekend has brought some serious progress to the layout, and with 6 days before the exhibition I am quietly confident it will be ready on time - probably with time to spare.

The fiddle yard board has seen the track laid and wired up, I'll test it tonight and see how it fares on DCC.

I've also ballasted the track on the extension - at least the part that isn't going to be buried in asphalt. The part that is, I am trying to represent this fairly unique way of protecting the rails from road vehicles, as spotted on Madison Street in Gretna, Louisiana (Thanks to Andy Reichert for the clear image snapped from Google Streetview - I was having difficulty finding a shot that wasn't blurred out or fragmented).



Here's my attempt so far - I cut the ties on the Peco code 55 track right back against the rail edge, and stuck down matchsticks which had been cut to the length of ties. I'm not sure how to represent the ties on the inside of the rails, I'm thinking either matchsticks cut in half to reduce the depth, sculpting them with 'Green Stuff' apoxy resin, or simply not bothering and just adding gravel and concrete to the inside of the tracks. I'll see which method works best.


Here's a couple more shots, the first showing the houses mocked up in place...


...the second showing the ballasting (still drying here) and the factory building in place with the sidewalks I've added.


I'll try and get some better shots outside in the sunshine once I've done some more work on the board.

Not much more left to do.

Update time! I've been quiet on the forums, because I've been working feverishly on getting the layout ready for sunday. Still more to go, but the task list is shrinking rapidly.

Photos:

The scene is really taking shape!

Cheers Mike!

I've had to stop for the evening after a mad days work on the layout. Plenty of time to get it finished for Sunday's exhibition.

As such, new photos: