The Build IS FINISHED.

After 3 1/2 years, Mina County is now complete.  There are some finishing touches that we will add over the next few years but the build itself is complete.  The last piece of foam has ben cut, laid, glued and painted and covered with texturing, the last car glued to the last parking lot of the last building.  What awaits us now is rewiring the underside of the layout.

The gate has served to keep the cats of the layout but it took a lot of trial and error to get it like that.  Pixie found ways into and onto the layout, where she played out her dreams of being Catzilla.  The sections are easily removable for access to the layout when needed.

We saved the peninsula for last and it was astonishing how quickly we finished off this area.

A little cleanup will still be required and some minor tweaking but the hedgerows are up and the cars are in.

This area posed a challenge to make it look realistic.  I was concerned about how we were going to make this happen since we originally laid out the foam nearly three years ago.  Turns out that our sample of Chooch adhesive brickface was all that was needed to do the trick.

The other area of concern was the removable hilltop on the peninsula.  It had to be designed to blend in and I was only partially successful at making that happen.  We will have to work on making that blend better going forward but it is functional and the gap not that noticeable.

This is not how we envisioned the peninsula when we first conceived of it.  But that's how the whole layout has turned out...a loosely conceived, organic piece of spontaneous decisions.  The tiny details will have to be more carefully considered.

Viewed from above, the removable piece looks pretty convincing.  Only up close does the illusion break down.

So what does one do when one's layout is complete?  Well, start playing with the trains, of course.  We found that one whole section of tracks is lacking power and we found dangling wires underneath.  We have to reattach them and redo the wiring underneath, labeling each wire and junction box to make repairs easier down the road.  This will be a tedious task but necessary.

So there you have it.  The build of a large N-scale train layout.  Thank you for taking the journey with us, and I hope we inspired you in your own build and that some of the hints shared here were of use to you!  May your tracks remain clear and your trains never derail.  :)