Great Northwestern Railway

Roads - they connect the model railroad to a piece of the world we are all familiar with. As such, having roads on a model RR is an important scenic element. That said, I find roads to be tedious. Too often I see them dropped in without context, looking like they are anything but pavement, or flat out cheesy looking. So I have been holding off making roads... until now.  Turay sits on top of the helix. I wanted to use the space to tie in Armstrong and give the feel of a local center of population, without making it look like a big city. Think Las Vegas, New Mexico. So the city would have several key structures (more on that later), tied in with, you guessed it, roads. The basis for the roads are sheet styrene. My daughter works retail, so she was able to score for me some relatively heavy signs they were throwing away. Yay! Unfortunately the backs had some kind of adhesive on them that made the 'clean' side unusable. The printed side had pricing info on it... oh well. Next step

 Mesa City has always been a favorite place for crews to work.  Off the main and plenty of switching, it attracts those who enjoy just working a local with some quality throttle time.  Since the expansion of the GNW, on-line industries have been lower priority as the focus was to get the layout running.  Well, now it is running, and I could turn my attention back to creating some industrial spaces. The geometry of Mesa City changed enough that the main did not really run through it anymore.  But... the main TOOK the real estate to go over it, thereby killing the former switching area.  However, the area where the former dispatcher's office was located is now reallocated for a new switching area: Mesa City East. Connecting to it was a bit of a challenge.  There is a set of shelves along the back wall that is more or less permanent.  I integrated the paint booth exhaust duct into the framework, so besides removing all that, I would have to a lot of rework on existing systems.  Not so