Nooksack: Next Steps for One-Town TOMA

Backdrop painting and rolling stock unpacking started

Before tackling the next steps, I should update what I have accomplished since my last post. As seen in the opening photo, I painted the initial backdrops with a sky blue fading to white along with clouds along the horizon. It took two coats to cover the unprimed hardboard and to attempt distant clouds. I am waiting until the scenery planning is further developed to add more atmospheric haze or distant hills or treelines. Also since my previous post (despite taking several attempts) the track connecting to the trestle now meets acceptable standards. My first attempt at soldering an extension of the flex track and sanding the riverbed under the trestle resulted in minor kinks and uneven rail heights. The second try, with a short length of sectional 24" curved track fitted in worked much more successfully. I plan to wait for more trial runs and the east staging to be completed to identify any additional rail joiners that should be soldered. I also plan to wait until after the east staging trackwork is complete to set up the airbrush for track painting. 

Staging plan drafted in my notebook

The east staging track is my current high priority and next step. While it will be sceniced for use now and for down the road, I don't want to invest a lot of money into it. On the other hand, I want to have it match the standards of the rest of the railroad. I learned from following a "good enough" protocol in parts of my last railroad, that I would not be satisfied with that approach in the long term. I decided to follow up with my plan to base the staging on a narrow hollow-core door that we have on hand. I also found that I have a lot of code 70 flex track and numerous older Shinohara turnouts. I will need to learn how to make the older turnouts "DCC friendly" and how to work with foam board and hollow-core doors, and these will likely be my next steps to make Nooksack operable as a one- town TOMA. In my mind, one feature, rather than obstacle, of model railroading is learning new approaches or techniques, particularly if one can break them down into manageable steps. I suspect those steps will be the subject of my next couple of posts.