The road to hell is paved with....

Original loading track configuration

 Paving operations continue on PoLA. Over the weekend I completed about 75 percent of the planned paved area. Just one more area to go. Whew, there is a lot of pavement on this layout!

The paved areas need some tuning to make sure the trains run without interference. But so far so good.



I also received a shipment of Walthers kits. I immediately got the storage tanks and Medussa Cement kits out to mock up.

New loading track location

The Walthers tall storage tank kits are beautiful kits, but were too wide to fit in the planned location. So I moved them to the background and cut some 4-inch PVC pipe for the foreground tanks.

I also relocated the petro-products loading track so that the 4-inch tanks are between the loading track and the "main" track. This does a much better job of screening the hole to staging. It also makes spotting the tank cars at the future loading platforms much easier as they are in the foreground. The second photo shows the new arrangement.

Medussa Cement mocked up as the Borax facility

I plan to kit bash the Medussa Cement into the storage silos at US Borax.  The actual facility is 8 silos long with some doubled and some single.  Turns out that 2 inch PVC pipe is nearly the same size as the Medussa silos, so I plan to use sections of 2 inch PVC pipe to expand the facility.

Mock up of the pier shed.

I made a foam core mock up of the pier shed to get a better feel for how much of the area should paved. I glued a print of the actual building to the front. The final model will use laser cut parts.