Good progress this year.

Lots more done this past two weeks.

     Had the two lads, Big John and Little John come over to help complete the wiring of the last few MP1's and 5's in Poncha Junction. The control panel switches were then wired in, along with the track feeders to the turnout motors. Prior to the lads coming over I added all of the new turnout track feeder droppers and soldered some small track sections to ensue we had good track pickup.
    Whilst all this was going on Barry came over on his last day off on holidays to help me with all the fascia. I had the local hardware store cut 3mm MDF into strips 240mm wide to save us having to do all that. These sheets are 2420mm long and can be tricky to handle given its flexibility. One of the other issues was to mark out where my control panels were to be. Anyway things went very smoothly as we got almost all the fascia up and control panel holes cut.
    Next step was to patch all the holes (I wanted a very clean look to the fascia) which took not too long at all. Barry brought over his orbital sander which attaches to a vacuum cleaner to keep dust levels down. This worked very well and made the sanding job go real fast.
     I did more work to the fascia around the two duck-unders to finish these areas off leaving a small section to complete near the stairs into the house.
     Then came painting. I chose a different colour than the flat black I had used on my SFRSD as I wanted something different. I finally came across Dulux Klavier which is a black / purple colour depending from which angle you look at it.
    Here are a few shots of the progress to date.

Barry working hard at the town of Cimarron.

  

Track work completed at Poncha Junction

   Very happy to see so much progress so now I can start to arrange my operating timetable, car cards and way bills ready for an ops session.
   A big thank you to the two Johns and Barry for their invaluable assistance.
Thanks for stopping by on the Monarch Branch.
Rod.