IT .....IS ....ALIVE!

The red light is a good sign. 

But not without a lot of help from friends.

Saturday, October 16th marked the first day the "10th and R Street" module had powered trains cross its four foot self. There were 3, count em, 3 significant wiring errors on my module that were identified and quickly fixed thanks to my friend Dick K. This is why we test the modules during our private ops sessions.  It is much less stressful shorting out the railroad here than in a public show.
Once all the problems were sorted out, the module did quite well  I think . Here is my WP S2 #555 leading the Yolo Rocket on it.

WP 555 on point. 

This test run also showed that I need to file back the rail-ends on the right side (looking at the module from the 'front') a millimeter or so. The fit for the rail connectors on that side was very tight.  Other than that I think I'm set to continue on to scenery.

A Jarring Juxtaposition: the beautiful Coffee Corner module
transitions to the bare 10th and R Street module. 

Speaking of which, I'm having fun with Google Sketch Up's photo matching feature for creating mock ups.  I'm using a 20 MB photo image I purchased from the Center for Sacramento History of the Carlaw Brothers Polishing and Blacksmith shop building. Since I know a couple of key dimensions, it was relatively easy to import the picture and scale it correctly. Then it was just a matter of drawing the building with the picture as a guide. I printed out the four sides in HO scale, glued the printouts to card-stock, cut out the walls and assembled them as a mock up. This was the last mock up I'll build before I cut plastic.  I think this was my third of this building, which has got to be mock up overkill. Whatever, each one has been better than the last.
With buildings that still exist, like the WP Fuller building, photo matching will be even more powerful. I should have pictures of some examples of this soon.