Prepping for Hallelujah

A dozen Tortoise turnout motors have now pigtails soldered on their contacts for use in the Hallelujah area at Silicon Valley Lines. Still need to finish up the spade connectors and sleeves on the other end of the cable.

Loading dock cut off

I really like the station building that was floating around the Hallelujah area. It's an old Pola kit and I promised myself I'll find a spot for it on the layout that makes sense with the paper mill and other new industries under construction in Hallelujah.

As it turned out this was a bit more difficult than I expected. Even when working with 15 linear feet of benchwork, there just was no good spot for the building, except one location squeezed between track and the back drop. However, while the building fit just perfectly, there was a clearance issue between the loading dock next to the platform and the track. After some deliberation we decided that the loading dock needs to be removed and cut back to the loading ramp of the freight house.

Cuts cleaned up

I pried a piece of the stone wall from the loading dock and fitted it before the opening left by the cut-away dock. Since there is some overhang from the platform roof, I decided to extend the platform a bit and built a small platform extension from styrene.

Stonewall fitted to loading ramp and glued in. Now working on the platform extension.

Platform extension glued in place ...

After the glue set up, I used flat black, roof brown, and CSX gray, as well as water, to paint the platform extension, and hide away the cuts. Tomorrow I'll use weathering powders to tie the newly painted areas into the existing faded paint work.

While at it, I also added a station sign.

... and painted.