Level 2 completed.

After getting the trim coil up on the top level and the top benchwork on, I gave the coil a nice coating of Kilz and then painted on “Skyline” colored paint from Ace.

Here’s a panoramic shot of the room too:

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Upper Level:	Lower Level:

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All that stuff I said about using manual turnouts… forget about it.

I decided since this is my “permanent” layout, I’m gonna go all out on it still. I know all mainline turnouts and sidings will be tortoise controlled with either a Hare or Wabbit DCC module, depending on location.

Yards and industry tracks I’m not sure yet. I’m thinking manual, but not sure if I would want to use the Hump Yard ones, the oversized looking Caboose Industries ones, possible some manual Blue Point controls, or just make ‘em all remote operated as well.

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This weekend I managed to get level 1 (the lower level) completed.

I drilled two holes into each bracket for cable routing, and went ahead and ran the DCC bus cable while I had the decking off. I then secured the the benchwork top with 2-4 screws per backet depending on location.

Then it was time to add the supports for the backdrop, which is aluminum trim coil. I picked up some 2″x48″ pieces of wood strip from lowe’s and cut them down to 10″ pieces. Then using Heavy Duty Liquid Nails, I glued the wood strips straight to the exposed bracket.

Next up, the trim coil. This is was just a matter of puting more liquid nails on the wood strip, pushing up the trim coil and moving to the next one. I used some staples from a staple gun a some spots to hold the trim coil in place, like the corners.

I had to break and cut the coil and one spot cause it was angling up and creating a bulge. I glued the two pieces together and will eventually use some caulking probably to blend the seems. Shouldn’t be visible to much.

Trimmed out the area for the bracket to go in.

and voila! An (almost) seemless brackdrop running around the whole level.

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