South side complete!

As of this afternoon, I have completed everything in regards to the trackwork on the south side of the layout.  That would be from El Dorado to Winnfield.

As I mentioned in a coupler posts back, I wanted to reduce the ICG trackage to a single track.  My original plan was to have the ICG crew return to the siding and then have them run around the train so it was ready for the next session and to add to the ops of this crew.

Now after several sessions, we've decided to change the staging to where everything gets restaged, and this includes the ICG.  So we've just been returning it to the siding and tying it down.  I' also shortened the siding thereby allowing my to hide it a bit easier and it also gives me a bit more depth behind the yard lead.

So I went from this:

To this.

I also mentioned that I wanted to a new customer in Ruston.   After doing a little proto research a few weeks back I found out that the Rock would drop off open hoppers filled with agricultural limestone for the local fields.  It would then unloaded via portable augers into trucks.  So with one of the turnouts from the ICG siding, I installed a house track at Ruston.

A little later I caught the 4464 in charge of a very short Winnfield turn sitting out a hopper on the new track.  This should be a very rare sight during op sessions as from what I gathered in an article, this was not very common on the prototype.

With this done today, the realignment project on the south side of the layout is now complete. 

The next projects.  I'll return to the north side of the layout where I plan to redo the Riceland trackage, move a turnout in Fordyce and start laying out the new fertilizer plant in Haskell.