Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge

[TMo]

Slapped on the remaining plaster cloth I had in inventory and managed to cover all of the remaining pink foam on the layout.  There's nothing realistic about a photo that includes a pink surface, and it's been showing since at least 2008.  

   

The duckunder (the area between the room's doorway and the center of the room where I took this picture) is a bit of an engineering marvel (at least for me), and one of the design elements that makes this 2-layer layout possible at eye level.  On the Hazleton side of the duckunder (hidden by the backdrop in the picture) the track is descending from Penn Haven Junction (a turnout just to the left of the girder bridge on the left side of the picture) into the storage level, and on the near side the track is ascending at an equal grade so the tracks can eventually cross over the hidden storage level at the right of the picture.  


Here's a shot of it back in 2008 without the backdrop (and all of that scenery!) and an incomplete viewing level.  The supports (vertical elements) are pieces of 1/4" aluminum joined to some stripped 2x4's.  The aluminum is bent at the top and lag bolts run into the floor joist in the ceiling.  The vertical supports then end up being the support for each side of the backdrop and (at the bottom) horizontal supports bolt into the verticals on both portions of the duckunder.  The decking (made to be light) is nothing but pink foam glued to a 1/4" plywood underlayment.  If you look carefully on the right edge of the photo, you can see the furrow I had to cut into the pink foam to get enough clearance to get one train under the viewing level.

   

I can remember the days back when I was designing and building the layout and wondering:

1) Will this ever work dependably?
2) Will I ever build any scenery?
3) Is this all a boondoggle?

To be near the finish line of major construction (even if it is 16 years later) feels pretty good.