Highway crossing at Ruston, LA

With my visitor gone and the Fourth now past, I had some time this weekend to get back to the layout.

The first thing I did was to work on the private farm drive by adding some earth colored grout for the drive and crossings.  It's drying as I write this so I'll see what it looks like tomorrow.

The next thing I worked on was the highway crossing at Ruston, LA.  Now like most things on my layout, this in not the prototype location as the depot and ICG diamond was in the middle of Ruston.  I have this set just outside of Ruston, so this is my rendition of a two lane blacktop.

Checking on road widths, I came up with a road of 24'.  That's two lanes of 10' with 2' past the outer lines, plus I'll add rock or dirt shoulders when the time comes.  For now it looks pretty close.

I started off cutting some cardboard to 2" wide to mock it up and then I found some cork that I used for the roadbed to keep the road elevated to match the track so there was little to no incline to the rails.  I cut the cork 2-1/2" wide so I could add some shoulders to the highway. 

This width seems to match up pretty close to the Blair Line crossing I chose.  My plan is to use some 0.30" styrene for the actual road, much like I did on the scrap yard driveway.

A video from my last vistor.

 

Another visitor!

This afternoon I had the pleasure of hosting another visitor to The Little Rock Line.

Alan B (some of you may know him as badlandnp on other train forums) and his wife Dorothy were on their way to Iowa to visit some friends & family and asked if they could stop by for a visit.

I've known him for a number of years through several model railroad forums.  Alan models in N scale and owns the Northern Pacific & Black Hills.   He brought along a couple of his favorite models to run on The Little Rock Line.  Both are BLI: a Pennsy T-1 and BLI Pacific that he lettered up in his own road, the Northern Pacific & Black Hills #104

Both had sound and both ran as smooth as silk as I've seen them run on his layout.

Thanks for stopping and thanks for an enjoyable afternoon, please drop by anytime Alan.

When I get a chance I'll get a quick video together of the Pacific and post it.