Picked up some $3 sheets from Wal-Mart to use has a under-the-bench valence to hide the all the clutter on the bookshelves.  Simple and effective.  Now to just clear the clutter on the desk

And I don’t think I posted pics before but I painted my other GERN buildings a few weekends ago.

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Started to work on the first road on the layout.  This is the road crossing the mainline along the Dixie River on the lower level.

I came across a product by Heki called Insta-road and decided to order some to see what it was.  It’s basically a thin piece of foam appropriately colored with a VERY sticky backing (ie: don’t let it accidentally touch something, cause it ain’t coming up).  If you get real up close and stare at it, you can see it’s a piece of foam, but standing out in the aisle where you’d normally be it actually looks pretty good. I cut some thin sheets of styrene to the correct shape and I applied the road to that for a nice flat surface I can super glue later to the foam bed.

I hand painted the strips with some paint pens.  I actually liked how it turned out. The foam texture I think gives it a good weathered appearance.  I messed up on the spacing on the upper piece and tried to fix the best I can with a double strip. I may eventually go back and redo it.

The road crossing is a Rubber Road Crossing from BLMA. I need to paint it black first before installing.

Here’s some pictures of the mock up.

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Finished up wiring the first SIGM20 board in the panel.  Next step is to install some signals on the layout and connect those to a RJ11 Junction box.

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Just a quick look at the wiring panel used for the signal system.

I’m using CML Electronics SIGM20 Signal Controller for my logic system, coupled with a Digitrax BDL168 for block detection (in the other wiring panel).  The main reason I like this system (other than it’s DCC based), is that it’s completely self-sufficient.  The SIGM20 stores all logic onboard, so there’s no extra computer or anything needed to be running in order for the signals to work.

You can still setup software to address all of the signals by it’s DCC address if you wanted for dispatch control, but I’m setting it up as a simple ABS system.

This one board will control the eight signals on the lower level siding. I’ll need two more for the upper level and other signals on the layout.

I also only caught this when looking at the pictures, but the double targets I labeled as R/G and Y/G, should be R/G and R/Y.  Whoops. I’ll have to fix those labels.

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