Layout update

I started last week by pulling up all the old track from the layout. My supplies came in by the weekend, and I spent Monday (I had off for President's Day) transferring the track plan and starting to layout the roadbed.

I had tried using the Life-Like track nails I had ordered to secure the road bed. The thinking was that if or when I move on to version 5.0 I could reuse the cork roadbed. I tried this for a section and decided I didn't like it. I didn't feel like the nails held the roadbed to the foam securely enough. I fell back to using the method I had used on my last several layouts: painters caulk.

The caulk is drying on the what will hopefully be the penultimate section of road bed right. I would have finished it off tonight but I ran out of pins to secure the roadbed.

I also started thinking about how to construct the hills. Hills? That is right the new layout has hills and a river. I need to post an updated plan of it eventually. You can see I had marked out 4, 5, and 6 inch lines on the piece of foam standing up on the right side of the layout to get a feel for how tall I wanted the hills to be. I am leaning towards 5 or 6 inches but I will have to sleep on it.

Layout 4.0

I ordered parts for start construction on a new layout. It will look something like this: