You can see the small extension I added to accommodate the last curve.

The two boards on the left are the DAC10 boards and control 16 tortoise turnouts by DCC.  The (soon to be) 3 boards on the right are the SIGM20 Signal controller boards.  Each SIGM20 can control 8 signals with 3 aspects each.

And work on the last bit of track is underway.

Then I went back to track work and started working on cutting and fitting track on the last portion of the layout.  Just need to buy a couple more pieces of roadbed for the mainline, install the mainline and the upper deck bridge and the track will be done (minus bus and feeder wires).

And lastly this morning I finished up the Shed building in Walthers’ Yard Office & Shed kit.  Turned out real nice.

At the BNSF Interchange I have all the track except the crossover to the backdrop section installed but not glued down yet. I’ll have that done in the next day or so.

I also decided I wanted to re-use my double track truss from the old layout. Instead of water underneath, I think I’m going to model a small roadway under it, but make it look like it may have been an old right-of-way with an old boarded up tunnel or something. Just an idea to try out for something different.

Still need to pick up 3 or 4 more 2×4 sheets to complete the upper deck base and then permanently install before any track goes down.

I also managed to install a temp loop so I can run trains up out of staging and then right back down through Dixie Curve. You can kinda see the temp track in the upper right of that photo.  This has been a good way to test different trains on the staging ladders and the soon-to-be-covered track/module breaks.  So far everything has been running 100%.

So at the beginning of the week I started to do a little cleanup on my layout wiring.  When I first ran the wiring for the servo turnouts and control panel, I ran the wire along with the bus wire.  I then had the thought that if/when I need to move this layout, having to remove all that wire (plus signal and more turnout wiring) would be a pain.  So I decided to pull it all out, bundle it in some split loom and run under the layout attached to the legs.  This way the whole bundle of wire can easily come off the layout by cutting some zip-ties.  Just some little prep-work for the future.

I also decided to relocate the BDL168 board and command station to a new location under the island.  The location I originally had these ended up not being very accessible and the wiring started to get messy. Now everything is nice and tidy.  I left room for a 2nd BDL168 board to be installed in the near future.  Turnout and signal hardware will mount under the island in similiar fashion as well.

The black bundle you see is the LED Occupancy wire running to the control panel. It connects to the 4 tan phone jack boxes, which are wired to the the BDL168 via the rainbow ribbon cable.

Once my re-wiring project was done, it was time to get back to the track.

I started to laying down the roadbed for the island this weekend, the first bit of viewable mainline to go down.  I wanted my mainline on the island to have a high ballast profile and have some height difference from the siding, so I doubled up on the cork roadbed.

I use Midwest Cork for my roadbed. It comes in a strip you need to pull apart to get your two halves, so you always end up with one piece having a nice profile and one piece almost square (until you sand off the extra bits).

So what I did for the mainline was use all the nicely profiled edges for the bottom layer and the ugly squarish piece for the upper layer because it’s gonna get trimmed.  I then laid out my track, traced the tie edge on the cork, and then used a carpet cutter to trim the cork using the bottom layer as kind of a guide.

And here’s a view showing the height difference between the mainline and the siding.

Once the roadbed was down, I started adding the super-elevation using the masking tape method.

Here’s an double stack pulling out of Yard Track 1 onto the bridge and then making it’s way up the incline on the staging lead.

So far everything has been running on the trackwork great except my autoracks.  But I’ve always had problems with the racks derailing for no apparent reason since my first layout. It’s like they are my “problem child” of the layout.  So I need to do a little pinpointing on the track to see if there’s anything in particular causing problems.

Everything else though (coal cars, double stacks, amtrak cars, hopper train, etc…) ran great throughout the yard and lead.

Next up I need to tidy the island and install the upper deck for the staging lead so I get the final staging turnout installed and connected to the wire panel. You can see the staging lead track and very top right of the photo, running off the currently installed upper deck below.

You can also see the foam incline right in the middle there that’ll bring trains between levels.

All tracks are bus wired, occupancy detection and switch control is fully operational on the control panel, and the track has been cleaned and “No-Ox’d”. Woohoo!

Next up is to install the feeders and bus wire for staging lead on the other side of the room that I installed about 1 months ago.