Staying on Track: Updates and TOMA Phase Two

Over a week ago, our electrician was able to spend a couple of days working with us. Several projects have been completed and most are at least started. Hopefully he will be able to finish up next week. One of the new general lighting fixtures in the basement is seen in this photo. He has all six of the hard-wired LEDs installed. He has all the boxes roughed in for the railroad lighting and the wire strung for those as well, but those receptacles or any of the switches are not in. I have been removing the detritus left over from the ceiling tile removal (some tiles were removed by the previous owners and I just completed removal of the balance). I have most of the nails and tile bits removed, with about one more session needed on the ladder to finish. You can see the nails and tile bits on the furring strips in the photo taken before I removed them in that section.

The rolling stock and buildings remain packed up, and the completed benchwork is under tarps while drilling, hammering, and removal continue overhead. The general lighting is much brighter, and I am making some headway in cleaning up after our messy work as well as visualizing what the future train room might look like. We have numerous bags of debris to move out of the basement, but with our recent 18 inches of snow and weeks of below zero temperatures, we have been slow moving it out to the garage to store until the township's "spring-cleaning event" aka free junk gathering. Once the electrical work is done, I want to paint the remaining basement walls including where the planned phase two of my TOMA plans will be located. 

I have been sketching out some ideas for the phase two segment. In the sketch, the right segment will be a new module, mainly focusing on scenery, including a cut and fill. I am thinking that the benchwork will be grid framing with cookie cutter plywood as the subroadbed. The middle section will be a module that I brought from Meadville, although it will have some additions and changes. For example I am adding a runaround, and what was the front will be the back. 

On the planning sketch, I have added a two foot square addition to the left, basically to keep a linear standard with the yard tracks here as long as my Nooksack passing track. This addition utilizes a corner module brought from Meadville seen in this photo. As a corner module with scenery, I found that I needed to clear it down to the plywood base. I made several discoveries or observations in doing so. Cork and ballast applied with white glue can be removed by saturating with isopropyl alcohol and prying with a painter's 5 in 1 tool or heavy putty knife. Sculptamold is also fairly easily scraped off. Ground Goop, on the other hand, is difficult to remove, requiring heavy chiseling and sanding.

I have been spending time in the basement most days. While on one hand, a lot of it is infrastructure work rather than modeling, on the other hand, many of the work days have been significantly more that just a few minutes. The condition of the basement has been a major gumption trap for quite some time, and I see a light at the end of that tunnel.