Trains are running!

I finished ballasting the majority of the yard. It still has a few spots that I need to touch up but they are not that noticeable unless you are scrutinizing it. I also did some landscaping around the freight house.

To celebrate the completion of ballasting the yard tracks, I took the layout out to the living room to run some trains on it. The tracks needed a good cleaning before I was able to start using it but I had a lot of fun once it got running. The scenery really adds to the layout.

The one thing that I realized is that I don't want to have a separate control panel for all the blocks that I wired into the layout. There are only 3 areas so far that I have think I want to have control over: the two engine tracks and the interchange track. What I really want is to do is have the track power tied to the orientation of the turnouts. So if the turnout is aligned to the interchange track, the interchange track should receive power. If it is aligned to the main, then the interchange track is isolated so that I can have a train waiting there while another train uses the main. To accomplish this I ordered two Caboose Industries 220S ground throws that have integrated SPDT switches. This also means that I only have one switch to throw that controls both the power and the turnout orientation.