Been a while ..

... since I posted last. Since then I have more or less wrapped up the Mattapan Ashmont line and am now back to the Ashmont - Harvard portion. The first step was redoing the tunnel from Ashmont to the Fields Corner portal using some new sections that I made in Sketchup. Aligning them especially on the sloping sections was a pain but it is now done.

First up is to finish Ashmont and scenic the area around the station. Last night I cut holes in the terrain to deal with the tunnel. I had originally planned not to do this and just hide the tunnel in the area with scenery but that was not working out. I also worked on the Shawmut station and started designing Fields Corner.

Once I get past FC and get some scenery down in the area, I plan to do Columbia Jct. and the south shore extension as far as the Neponset river, so that I can then do stations and scenery between FC and the tunnel entrance near Andrew. At that time I will also connect the Milton branch in to the Old Colony and scenic that as well - looks like I need a building for the Keystone Camera factory.

Finally at Mattapan

This morning I finished scenery around Capen St. so have moved to last last station on the trolley line which is Mattapn. I started designing the station building and in the process discovered I had got the track spacing wrong in the yard so had to go back and relay part of it. I also took the opportuntiy to add a crossover that was not on my track chart but showed up in several pictures.

I also have downloaded more scenery vegetation which helps a lot.

Heading to Mattapan

Continuing to work on the Mattapan Ashmont trolley line. I have installed scenery as far as Central Ave, including some placeholder buildings for Baker Chocolate so I could put in the NH Milton branch spur. I decided I would extend this spur east to connect to the Old Colony so that a freight activity could be run. I intend to make a field trip and get photos of the actual buildings sometime, when the weather is better.

I had made some line poles which I placed using the auto gantry placement and that went well, they look good. It has the cross spans but I still need to add the contact wire itself. Also Mattapan yard needs some custom poles.

I am having some problems building the Milton station, the stairway isn't coming out very well so I still have to go back and finish that. Also only a few roads are in place using dumb roads.

Once that is done the area from Central to Mattapan is mostly trees and a few houses so it shouldn't take long to get to Mattapan, maybe by the end of the week.