Peb. 24th: Continuing the perimeter!

Today we worked on tying the east section together with the 4X3 industrial section on the northeast side.  We have to put in a gorge with a trestle but we didn't get to that this weekend.  We put in 9 hours of work on the layout between yesterday and today and my father put in more than that on his own building houses out of balsa wood and printed patterns on thick stock paper.  We had trouble with one area by a canyon cutout on the east side...the bottom was uneven and the glue didn't overcome the foam's natural tendency to warp.  It doesn't affect our tracks any.  Today I cut a lot of ramps.  It's my least favorite thing to do with the hot wire scroll table because it requires far more precision than my shaky hands can provide and thinking about it while doing it makes it that much worse.  We are getting really good at cutting out smaller pieces and fitting everything together just so but the next phase of the build is going to be the most challenging so far...several tracks crossing over each other at different heights.  This is going to look amazing when it's done, though!!!!  It's already far more complex than I could have hoped for and that's a good thing!!!

Check out this annotated video of our progress to this point: