A Lift-out and Other Progress

It's been about four months, so I guess it's time for another update.

I spent some time on the Laurel roundhouse, and as of about early July, it looked like this:

It still looks like that as of today (24 September).

I had a work session in mid July. We added a couple more sections of benchwork along the wall (where Casper will be) and continued the subroadbed installation from the point we left off last time, at the temporary bridge.  A couple of the guys added buss wires and installed some track feeders. Thanks, guys!

After that work session, I decided to get the lift-out built to replace the temporary immovable bridge I showed in the last update. I got tired of walking all the way around the Laurel peninsula pretty quickly!

I documented that whole construction story in this thread at RR Line Forums. Here are a couple of shots of the lift-out in place and removed:

That sure makes it easier to get around the layout! The lift-out is in and wired, though the wiring is temporary until I get the wall and door that will be on this side of the above photos completed. Then the wires will be permanently run around the top of the doorway, rather than through a cable "bridge" on the floor where they are now.

I focused pretty exclusively on the lift-out until early September. Then on September 11 I had another work session. Four guys showed up, and once again we accomplished quite a bit - completion of bench sections along the Casper wall (benchwork construction will never be done!), installation of more subroadbed, and more track wiring. This time the wiring added feeders to the opposite end of Laurel yard (near the lift-out). Before that, all the yard tracks got current only from the end near the Laurel engine facility.

Here's a really exciting shot of those newly-installed feeders:

Here's the now-complete benchwork for Casper, along with some NP mainline hidden subroadbed installed (Casper will be about five inches above this), leading right up to where I need to cut a hole in the wall to get to the next room:

And to cap off this installment, here's an overview of the layout as of today:

Now to get started cutting that hole!