Mesa City Comes Back To Life....

 Mesa City used to connect the layout across the western wall of the room.  The western wall was, as you may recall, removed to make room for the expansion.  It was ruthlessly demolished... and much sadness ensued.  (https://greatnorthwesternrailway.blogspot.com/2017/12/and-just-like-that-mesa-city-is-gone.html)  It was one of the nicest areas of scenery, as well as a wonderful switching opportunity.  So I kind of put Mesa City out of my mind as a pleasant and yet sad story.  

Fast forward about two and a half years and I realized a fatal flaw in my track plan.  Mesa City was not only a great place to watch and switch trains, it was also the place for handling coal cars for the generating station as well as turning commute engines.  Something had to be done!  Surveying the area, it turns out there WAS enough space for a wye and maybe a lead for switching.  Grabbing a couple pieces of plywood which, ironically, were from the staging yard under the old Mesa City, turned out to be about right.  Enough space for the wye, and yet not so much as to interfere with the room.  As it turned out, I also had enough space for an industry.  Setting the pieces out, lo-and-behold, Orchard Supply would work there again... pretty much exactly where it had been before, although the lead would be reversed now.  

Here are some photos of the new extension.

Temporarily held in place, it fit pretty well.

Adding bracing.  Ya, backwards, but it worked.

Legs now installed, and playing with track arrangements.

Boxes of shotgun shells work great for setting track onto adhesive caulk! 

Final layout of track.  Note the 2 leads in the front.  These will be plenty to work the power plant.  The wye uses some of the old track and some new.  The tail of the wye is pretty short - 2 cars or 2 engines is all.  But that should be enough for turning lokies.

A low angle shot showing the final arrangement with a GNW switcher in the foreground.  This will be a typical situation going on here once ops gets back into full swing.  

The back side of the new peninsula allowed for placement of a board for the installation of electronics.  Ya, not much there now - just for the auto-reverser.  But will be adding an LCC node for the surrounding track and main in the background.