Road Show Work Session and Visitors

With the rail guns complete it was time to get get back working on the road show. Gerry stopped by on Saturday with another chocolate cake to energize us as we laid the sub-road bed for the layout.

Modifying the track plan

As we laid out the turnout mock-ups to see how the track plan looked in full scale, we decided to make some tweaks.  There would have been a nasty "Ess" curve in the three-way turnout in front  of the ship yard, so we removed it and simplified the whole design a bit.

With a finalized track plan, we cut strips of 1/8 inch aspen plywood for the sub-road bed. We glued this to the foam with yellow carpenters glue. We placed weights on road bed sections so they would dry flat and smooth on the pink foam.

River bank taking shape in front of the ship yard

With the glue drying on the road bed pieces, we used knives, key hole saws and Surform tools to shape the foam terrain.  In some places we glued small sections of foam back on the layout to make the river bank look more varied. The yellow glue on pink foam can take a long time to dry, especially in areas where the pink foam abuts pink foam. In some cases, the glue will never dry as it makes an airtight seal. But as long as it dries on the perimeter, we should be OK.

Mike, in his secret mission as a rebel spy,
is  plotting how to sabotage the Aquia Line.

Later on Saturday Mike Garber from Richmond and Peter Sefton from Alexandria stopped by to visit.

Mike is a HO modeler from Richmond, VA. He works for VDOT. He has relatives that fought in the ACW for the CSA.

Peter Sefton and I discuss the burned station at Falmouth

Like me, Peter is native New Yorker, but unlike me, is now retired as a census official. He  is very involved in historic preservation of structures in the Alexandria and Washington area. He lives in Alexandria. He has an interesting web page here