A lot of work have been done the last weeks. Coloring and installing all types of gras and trees are in progress.

Easy Water will be used in the waterfall.

There has been som progress on the bridges over Jakobs Creek.

The big stone arch bridge has got the stone pattern added. For the small bridge or viadukt to the right, the concrete surface have been added.

The concrete surface has also been added to the long wall. All patterns are printed on paper, using an inkjet printer, after some touchup in Photoshop. The concrete pattern is from a real world concrete wall, using a picture.

Later all the parts should be blended together with plaster, before coloring.

Its slow progress, but tonight I have created some bridge abutment from images printed on cardboard, The effect is looking good, and even better after some more work.

Atlas has just released their new Z-scale flextrack and I just got my first box with 25 pieces i house. Its looking great, prototypical US spacing, similar to the Micro Trains flex track. Easy to bend in fine curved shape and the length is good, 24 inch.(610 mm). Holes for the Nails are missing, so then I must use glue to fasten the track. I prefer nails, bit it will work.

Märklin flextrack at front, new Atlas Flextrack in the middle and the MTL track installed on my layout. The Märklin track has not the prototypical spacing for US layouts, compared to the other two.

With a complete box of 25 pieces, I have plenty of track for new projects. 25 * 610 mm: 15.250 mm, more than 15 meter of tracks. Nice.

It take some time to finish this part of the layout, but now some plaster is added between some of the rockpieces. I need to mold some more rocks also. Still a lot of blue styrofoam that should be covered.

One more bridge is installed. Still missing some support for the bridges. Check out the images.

The styren base for the main bridge over Jakobs Creek start to live. The bridge is cut out of 0,5 mm styren. Need some more work, and some basement structures, but I think it will work.

Finally some work have been done to create the landscape and the bridges crossing Jakobs Creek. It has been a long time with no progression on the layout.

The base for the landscape, using styrofoam, is near complete and some pieces of rock have been put in place.

Now its time to create the bridges and one test of the mainbridge is set up. What type of bridge shall be installed?

It's possible to use a drop in decoder in the new AZL-61011, SD75M and similar models, delivered in 2014.

I already had some TCS Z2 decoders in spare, so I want to use them instead.

Read about my Project here: Mount TCS Z2 decoder in AZL-61011, SD75M

A lot of work have been done on the rockwork and on the vegetation along the line. Below you can see 2 images from different parts of the layout.

The support wall for the lower line has been installed. Some rock pieces are installed.

Very little progress the last months, but finally the work with ballasting the tracks and coloring of the layout have started.

Here some images showing the work in progress:

Tonight all the tracks for the turntable and roundhouse have been installed and tested. 2 of the outside tracks will be extended later(and the 2 yard track will loose some lenght). Must also install a automatic polarity change unit un the turntable later. Have made a switch and button to control the turntable, must be placed on the fascia.

Finally all tracks are installed on the new permanent layout. Last night I finished the High Line double track and 4 turnouts. Run some test on the track and everything looks great. On this part I dont use corkbed under the track. I normally like to use spikes, but here I clued all the track to the roadbed. Next step will be to paint the tracks.

The base for the Eastside commercial and industrial area has been installed, on top of the eastside of the station tracks, giving a good area to build Eastside.

I have started to build some mockups of the buildings to figure out how it would be and to check out the different options. I am planning to use many paperbuildings and using photos of actual buildings to create the the front of the buildings.

The 4 images, in poor IPhone, low light quality, gives you an idea of how it can be.

There have been slow progress on the new permanent layout, the empire, the last months, but some progress have been done on the mountains the last weeks. Many rock pieces have been installed and the work can soon start to blend them into the surface with some plastering. I would love to start some coloring, but think I will wait until more of the rockwork have been finished.