Elmer Lane 17 - scenery unfolding

 DB says:

A basic scenery layer has continued to invade Elmer Lane.  But before ballast could hit the roundhouse tracks, they needed to be wired up and a few joints soldered. I've now wired 9 of the 15 roundhouse tracks, heading clockwise from the one next to the boiler house. This includes the tracks opposite the four arrival tracks on the other side and the two little stubs by the foreman's office if that makes sense. 

This is ugly, but it works, most of the mess is is hidden by the roundhouse, and its so much easier than drilling individual droppers down to below. I'll paint the wires the same Harvard Grey as the floor. I've also fixed up those two little stub tracks over beside the office that I'd inadvertently only wired up one rail on.

There was a plan to have on-off switches allowing power into two clumps of three tracks each for the remaining six stalls. This would enable three or six tracks to be electrically isolated - to display non-DCC locos, or even to give DCC locos a rest 'off-the-grid'. I'm not sure I have the energy to do this but we shall see. I might just leave a few completely dead. I will at least power the track inside the end 'wall of windows' as things will look pretty good going into that stall visible through the end wall. 

Another thing we noticed on the modelling day was that on the real Elmer Lane, the sleepers aren't really visible, there are ballast fines everywhere. Here the sleepers stand out, being dark black. 

I tempered this slightly by putting a wash of light grey+brown over them and think this looks a little better. The yard will also be weathered once the ballasting is completed.

Having a bunch of ballast between the rails can get messy in the flangeways, and the few tracks I have here with plenty of ballast on the outer sides and little in the middle look odd, so I'll probably keep the main approach tracks looking tidy as in the pic above.

Ballast has spread far and wide and some green is going down:

Although this isn't a 'countryside' module, there is a little green about, beside the Hoki line, around the back of the roundhouse, and in a few spots in the depot itself. Some low-relief 3d greenery and maybe even some static grass will make an appearance. I think the little hut visible at the end of one of the wee stub tracks was a RhysCasting. It was once on my Moana module.

I even discovered a well-traveled mini-cabbage tree from Moana in a box of scenery bits, so it has been installed too.

Here it and the hut as they were on Moana:

And now further west along the rails at Elmer Lane:

A pile of lighting-up wood was started on one of the stub tracks, made from offcuts of that basswood. Some had grey on one side, some black, so that gives a little variety through the pile. Its been added too since.

Then some soldering of fishplates enabled the strips of 'concrete' to be laid between the tracks and ballast laid:

And some overall views as ballasting has progressed and some of these locos have seen the forst sun in many a year.