Blow the Foam off another one

I had a chat with Matthew F last Saturday and said I'd give him a hand with the foam work for the area he is going to work on - the section between the river and the base of the peninsula. So today I got out some sheets of blue expanded foam and made a start on some of the foam work for Matt. It involved getting out some drafting film and making templates as I went along of the curve of the track edges. From these templates I was then able to mark out the curves on the sheets of foam and hack into them with the handsaw. All up I was able to get 8 sections cut out and ready to glue down another day.

We will build up the foam until we have enough to shape into the hills needed to make the rolling hills along that section of the peninsula.

In between this I helped Kev M to connect up a second hand laptop to the layout as he prefers this to the Raspberry Pi. That reminds me, I must ask him since a laptop will drive the wireless if the N scalers can have the R-Pi, as we could sure make use of it.

Bruce H started adding in more blocks of foam along the top edge of the helix so we can shape it for scenery. Oh and the helix got sort of electrically connected up temporarily by the fellas and a test loco or two made their way up it from bottom to top and down again - progress!

I cleared out all the junk from down the end of the central peninsula so that the foam work can be continued down there. We'll drop in some basic land forms so as to give some scenery until Keith S gets some time to do some more work on his township. With the cleanup, the area at the back of the peninsula where some more small industries are going was also cleaned up and a small re-jig made. The Medusa Cement plant will probably move to the right of the original location since it uses a shed to cover the rail wagons during loading. This shed isn't high enough for double stacks and such so the move to the right will allow the passing loop to be used by all trains.

In the area where the cement plant was originally proposed for, along the skyboard, we plonked in a platform we had kicking around and it sorta fills the location nicely. So maybe we can put something like an open shelter type station on a short platform of perhaps two cars length along there. This would give a small additional stop for passenger trains and fill the empty spot. Being on a passing loop, the passenger trains wont cause problems to the high speed freights on the mainline.

I reckon something like a small milk shed and waiting shed would do the job on a short packed earth platform that has sleepers at the front to keep it from falling onto the tracks, would look the part of a nice regional small branchline stop.