While I’d never call COVID-19 a good thing, it has made for a lot more time at home and accelerated progress on the layout. Yesterday, I accomplished a major step by painting the entire staging level black. I chose black for the fascia and staging area for two reasons. First, black helps things hide that might otherwise be distracting from the main layout, and second, I’m modeling the coal fields, so black just fits. Not to mention, it’ll look really nice with locomotives in Southern’s tuxedo scheme! I’m very happy with the way the curved Masonite fascia looks in satin black. . . Darth Vader would be proud. I’ve heard people complain that you can’t fill gaps in Masonite, but I found lightweight spackling compound (the kind used to fill nail holes in drywall) works great. I was able to repair a few accidental gouges from a circular saw quite well. The most exiting thing about this step is what it means next–track! I should be hand laying my first few switches this week and laying

These pictures give you an idea of the large amount of staging I’ll have on the layout–probably 2-4x what I need, but better too much than too little. In the first picture, you can see the ties for the switches that mark the entry into the four stub tracks of L&N staging representing the town of Pennington. The Southern will hug the aisle on the right, and the staging yard representing Appalachia will begin just above the green container on the floor and form a reversing loop around the peninsula.

The second photo shows the layout’s other loop which will allow for continuous running on the staging level. I didn’t have this in the original design, but I was inspired by my young nephew’s visit to try to have something running in a circle for him to enjoy (he LOVES trains). Unfortunately, I didn’t have anything running by the time he visited, but I still thank him for inspiring this modification–I think it will pay dividends in the future for breaking in new equipment and entertaining kids. And hey, sometimes you just want to run trains in circles.