Setting up lights and more ground cover

[ Emsingen posts ]

The lights are on the layout. Since the platforms are made from styrofoam, I made mounting holes from 1/8" styrene tubes. I would have preferred brass tubes, but didn't have any in the right size in stock.

The tubes are glued to the subroadbed and the platform. The lights are sitting loose in the tubes.

It was still a bit early, so I proceeded to work on ground cover between the tracks. This is very fine, dark brown sand with a very pleasing color that nicely captures the look I was after. Here and there I added a bit from sand used for the platforms, as well as some weeds. In the early 70's this active freight area would have been reasonably well-maintained, so the main areas should be mostly devoid of weeds.

A nice side-effect of using a different ballast color for the main track, with the darker sand as background, the main track now really pops. One even gets the impression that the yard tracks are lower in the ground.