Mesa City East is MANIFEST!

 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 something I wanted to do.  So the new extension basically built up over the shelf framework to the new location.  There is also the sprinkler water supply shut off valve and drain that was located directly over the extension.  A little bit of poly tubing redirected the drain into a 5-gallon bucket under the lowest shelf.  

The new support for Mesa City East was straight-forward, ladder-framing benchwork, topped with 1/2" plywood and 1/2" sound-board.  Nothing exciting there.  1/8" Masonite was put up for the backdrop.  The corner has always been kind of gloomy, so new lighting was added.  Ebay came to the rescue with a great price on a couple sticks of track lighting and fixtures.  

While working on this and on the opposite side of the wall with the benchwork for Halcon Cement (more on that later), and through a conversation with my amazing bride, the idea was birthed of connecting the two switching areas.  IF done, it would effectively allow someone to run the entire sceniced portion of the layout, from end to end, without any need to throw but one switch.  Perfect!  And for operations, it would either be not used or become an interchange track.  Perfect again!  So a little boring and fiddling later, the 'sneak-track' roadbed was in place.

Next came track laying.  The back wall offered a perfect location for a couple nice bridges (future), and while a little tight, the radii were not uber-bad: 28 outside (sneak-track) and 24" for the switching lead.  Note all mainline curves are 30"+ (with one 28" radius exception), but for switching areas, I figured this would be OK.

Getting track to Mesa City East, I originally wanted to leave it a stub end, figuring I will make it what I want later.  But playing with the left-over switches and track that I had, turned out a pretty decent arrangement could be put together, complete with a run-around.  The switching area will handle about 7-8 cars; about perfect for the layout.  And it will give the Mesa City Local crew a fair amount of work to do.  

Some overview shots here:

So there you have it.  One last overview of the entire area:

Should keep someone busy for a while!

Yes - it's operational!

ADDENDUM!!!

Also had a chance to hang the photo-backdrop behind the Sinclair-Baker Refinery.  The backdrop came from Train Junkies (https://www.trainjunkies.com/), and I selected their "American Refinery" in HO.  Very happy with their service and the quality of the print.  

Needed to get some of the top cut off owing to the tight clearance.

Before trimming.

After installation, it immediately put a huge amount of visual distance into the scene.

Excited to get some loading racks put together and installed.  This will be another fun place to do some switching!  

That's all for now.  More later....