After UP 9997 stops on mainline, Athearn 4-8-8-4 pulling 8 Kato Smoothside passenger cars proceeds through on the siding.

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These cars were hard to find (even on ebay), but unknown to me Kato planned a limited run late last year. Looks like they must’ve just shipped them to dealers. I saw them on the new arrivals lists at modeltrainstuff.com. They only had 16 of each set in stock, so I ordered one of each before I lost my chance. I want to use these cars with the UP Big Boy.

So if you’re looking for these cars, head over the MTS(Set A, Set B), your favorite online dealer or local hobby shop before they’re gone again.

Thought I’d shoot a little tour video of the layout today showing the latest progress. Enjoy!

I decided to go ahead and make all of my industrial siding turnouts manual controlled, mainly for cost reasons. No sense is spending, for example, almost $80 on turnouts and mounts for the 3 GERN turnouts that will won’t see and much action as mainline turnouts will. I also feel manually control will just be easier to operate for quicker switching maneuvers, etc.. So I opted to use Humpyard throws. I already had two on had and got them installed on the GERN industry.

First I drilled a whole underneath the layout and ran up the two guide cables.

Since the lower level is mostly on 1.5″ of foam, I needed to mount the cable above the plywood bench top, so I made some trenches to lay the cable in, and then assembled the throw mechanism.

I then used some hot glue and some Liquid Nails to fill in the gaps to secure the cable.

Well, now I needed someplace to mount the throws, so I finished up the lower fascia.

And then finally mounted the turnout throw to the fascia.

And tada!

Ordered a new kit from Pikestuff today to expand the GERN plant.

I’ll build it up so it’s about half as deep as normally intended so it’ll be more of a backdrop building, and it’ll go to the left of the kraft mill with an interconnecting pipe bridge. Not sure if I want to paint it to match the color of the mill building or go with some other color yet.

First I secured all the track down for the GERN plant.

Then I cut and attached the fascia for the lower level lights.

Here’s another shot of the corner tunnel I’m going to add. Couldn’t really decide what to do with this area, so I thought a little tunnel cutting through the edge of a cliff would look good.

And lastly just a shot of how the wiring panel looks today with the turnout wiring RJ-11 Boxes.

I typically don’t get much time to work on the layout during the week anymore as I’m on baby duty from when I get home from work until I go to bed, so most of my hobby time is on the weekend now. Here’s what’ve I worked on since the last update.

The Dixie River bridge now has track on it. I used Micro Engineering Bridge Flex Track. ME track is pretty darn cool. Flex track can bent to the curve you want and it’ll hold it’s shape on it’s own. Track looks real nice. Temped to do the upper level in ME track, and if I like it redo the lower level. We’ll see. But here’s two shots of the bridge.

The crossing in the background will be a BNSF mainline crossing.

I need to get a wider shot of this, but on the corner just before the bridge I decided to add a tunnel here. This is the west side entrance (On the lower level, West is going to the right)

And lastly I marked out the track location for the GERN plant and will probably glue this down later today or possibly sneak it in during naptime during the week.

This weekend I got the bridge over what will eventually be the Dixie River constructed.

Tried a few troubleshooting tips, but nothing seemed to help. So I boxed up the throttle and it’ll be on it’s way to Digitrax tomorrow for repair.