Nothing too exciting to report other than the ballast work is progessing.
Over 75% of the mains are covered as of today, along with 4 turnouts. So far these turnouts have proved to be not much of a challenge as I remember. I've used several drops of oil on the points to keep the water and glue mixture from leaving an insulating film. I've only had to lightly scrape a few spots to allow for conductivity.
I'm also trying to be very careful this time and spread the ballast to just below all the ties with a soft brush. There has been only a few specs of ballast that I've had to pop off the inside of the rails.
One thing that came back to mind was a tamping tool. I used this where the track is laid on the cork instead of just the ceiling tile. It's made from two pieces of balsa wood is 1.5" long and 3/4" wide with another small piece glued on handle. One edge gets laid on the rail and the other lays on the ceiling tile and I just pad the ballast very lightly. It gives the ballast a nice gentle even slope and shapes the ballast edges more evenly than your finger can.
I've got about 2' of mainline left to cover and then 6 more turnouts. After this I can start staking out some foundations that will need to be poured for a couple of buildings and or concrete pads. Once these are done I can finish applying ballast to the remainder of the sidings in Malvern.
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