It's been about a month and life swept me away from time to work on the layout for a little bit. But I did make some time to start on structure-building and a little scene composition. I bought two Walthers structure kits, the Trackside Oil Dealer and the Farmer's Co-op Grain Elevator, which should give me adequate plastic to bash into the structures I want to represent.
One of the challenges of a shelf layout this narrow is capturing the expanse of the prototype within a really small footprint. Most buildings will have to be flats (or almost-flats) in order to locate them realistically, especially along the runaround, but I'm playing with some ways to keep it interesting.

'Flat' doesn't necessarily mean 'parallel with the backdrop', and taking one or two buildings off the 'grid', just like running track at an angle to the benchwork, seems to work wonders for opening up some space. With so little room to work, though, I have to get creative:



I also made a raised area for the oil storage tanks, using some sheet styrene and framing it with weathered wood. Its purpose is to hide the hinges that allow the layout to fold up, on the nearside of the tracks (the ones on the other side will be hidden by a small, removable warehouse):


The tanks will sit atop this, with piping, fencing and a stairwell to reach it from ground level. I changed the rightmost tank into an older design by scraping off the welded seams and replacing them with Archer rivet decals:

Still a long way to go-- I sprayed all of these with some Testor's silver enamel as a base coat, but am waiting to do any more painting until I've decided on their location in the scene to provide the best views.
Prototype research: I did get down to the San Luis Valley this month (I make a trip there every year) and took some pictures in the right season for what I'd like to model, late September-early October.


Bonus: exploring south, I also saw Cumbres Pass with the aspen leaves changing, which was just gorgeous-- and the beauties that inhabit that stretch of the mountains are almost enough to pull me over to the narrow gauge side.


Thanks for looking,
Phil