A new crossover south of Argo yard

 

You can see a curved crossover in the lower part of this photo. The one with the flashlight shining on it is the one I finally just installed at the very south end of the layout, south of Argo yard. Let's unpack this photo and all these tracks. From bottom to top, in the street are the tracks to Lonestar Cement and the South Seattle Intermodal Terminal (truck trailers strewn all over for the installation of the turnout). Above that is what looks like a double track curved mainline with a (new, the subject of this post!) crossover in the middle of it. But appearances can be deceiving - the closer track to the right curves around in a reverse loop that eventually becomes the "Colorado Main" leading back to the Stacy St. yard. The farther mainline track heads into the hidden staging yard of 7 tracks representing Tacoma and Portland off the layout to the south. Heading off to the left, the nearer track is "Main 1" leading to Stacy St. yard, Seattle and northward, and the farther main track is "Main 2" which has the lead to the Argo yard and parallels Main 1 around the layout to the left (north) as far as Mukilteo.

Above Main 1 and Main 2 is the mainline between Everett and Mount Vernon to the north. Above that in the shadows is the Woodinville Branch (I forgot to turn its lights on, oops.). Above that, on the upper border of the photo, is the edge of the Skykomish staging yard, at the far easternmost point on the layout.

Well, I had to install this crossover once we built the "Black River Jct. yard" above Harbor Island (Legotown) because we needed to connect Argo yard to the reverse loop, in order to run trains "south" from Argo to BRJ. I procrastinated on this for months, if not years, but now it's done. Hurrah!

The next two pictures show track-level views of the crossover during glueing. I pin down the tracks and then drip liquid latex diluted 3:1 with water for attaching tracks. Then later when I put down ballast, the water-based white glue doesn't unglue the latex, which has dried by that time and is impervious to water. That's the good news. The bad news is that I've found that liquid latex deteriorates after 20 years or so (just like a rubber band does) so there are places I have had to re-do over time. I usually put weights on the track during glueing, too, but for some reason I hadn't done this when I took these photos.

So, here is a photo of the track with the weights on it...

And, finally, here is the new crossover after it passed the testing phase, with the trailers back in place and everything ready to go. (In case you were wondering, those white triangles are markers we use for measuring the length of trains entering each of the hidden staging tracks in the Tacoma staging yard off to the right.) It doesn't seem like much, but this crossover is an important key to the future operation of Argo yard, the Lonestar Cement switching area, and the new Black River Jct. yard. It's great to finally have it in operation!

Adding "just one more" caboose to the roster

 

One of the advantages of, if not the point of, modeling the BN in 1973 is that you need a caboose on almost every train. So, in addition to hundreds of different models and paint schemes of locomotives to collect, there are a lot of caboose variations. I started out collecting your basic Athearn and Atlas models and pretty soon I had more than enough cabooses (not to mention staging tracks) to run a typical day's worth of 15 or so trains. So I thought I was done. But then I started finding out about brass caboose models being a thing, and started collecting them from random swap meets and retailers. So my caboose fleet doubled and I had accumulated way more than more than enough. One project finished! (like, 30, which really seems like enough!)

But you know where this is going. Last year Division Point decided to import a run of the ex-GN X-1 series cabooses, some of the weirdest-looking cabooses ever, and to make some in BN paint!! I already had an older brass model of GN X-1 in bright red paint, but this just seemed too good to pass up. So, now I am officially finished collecting cabooses. For the second or third time. The picture above shows how good (and unusual) it looks, and I also posted a couple of short videos of it here and here.

There's only one caboose model that I still don't have and really want to, which is that NP one with the super-high straight cupola. I've seen unpainted brass models of it but never one decorated for BN, even though I know that some of them survived post-merger. If you see one of those, get it for me or let me know about it. Otherwise, I'm DONE.