Seeing Jamie’s post over at his CSX Dixie Line blog about his Crossing Gate install (awesome job!) inspired me to dig out my old Grade Crossing Pro module and my NJ International crossbucks and do a quickie install.  Haven’t seen these guys light up in almost 2.5 years.

Shaun General

Been doing a little work here and there on the layout during these summer months.  Finally starting to cool down in the garage so I’ll hopefully be getting in there more often as fall/winter approach.

Mostly I’ve got the fascia installed, painted and cut.  Also put some LED lighting at each yard throat.  I’m also finally stopped for more insulation foam to complete terrain building.  Got the corner sections in the work and in process of installing the last braces for the center island.

I also played with using weed fabric as a cheap fabric skirt.  It looks good when installed but it’s kinda stiff so getting to things (like tools) under the benchwork was a pain.  So I took it down for now.  You can see a piece still installed in the 2nd photo.

Shaun General

Decided to swap out the searchlights for the signal bridge as originally planned.

The bridge is a N.J. International kit built with searchlights by Richard at Custom Signal Systems.

Shaun Scenery

After having the garage looked at, no structural damage was found. Yay!

So it was time to bring the modules back in and put them back together. Eek!  Luckily everything worked as planned except for one piece of track.  It was a curve that bridged two modules. I re-laid the section of track using rail joiners at the module break so hopefully next time it comes apart it’ll go back together nicely.

For the bus wiring I switched from the previously used Anderson Powerpoles to crimp bullet connectors and labeled wires for the connections between modules.  Much cheaper and much faster/easier to assemble.

After the layout was back together I decided it was time to fill  in the “blue foam hill”.  I used cardboard strips to fill in the empty spaces, then covered the whole thing in masking tape and painted.  I ran out of tape so I still have a little to do.

And while I had the paint out I also gave the plywood top a coating. Looks much better than seeing all that bare plywood.  Got about half the layout done so far.

Shaun Benchwork, Scenery