Progress has been slow as of late

Well it seems that ever since my leak last week (couple of posts ago), progress has been very slow.  Had a few other things come up also.  My wife just got her tonsils removed on Thursday so I've been tending to her and the kids alot.  She is in a lot of pain and I've heard that it really bad when they are removed when you are an adult.  She's a tough cookie but this is kicking her butt.  I also did a small train show yesterday to sell a few excess items of mine.  I've always enjoy the smaller shows and if you have some stuff to get rid of, these are the places.  You also will find some deals for you also.
This upcoming week, I hope to get my butt into gear and finish up some projects.  Plan on completing the scenery that I did my improvements to the helix today.  This summer has only seen a few improvements to the layout.  Took care of my motive power shortage also.  I'm also going to retire the red B39-8 I have.  Let me know if you want to buy it.  It's got the whole 9 yards.  My objective this week is to get the Valley Sweetners building built or at least the frame of what I want.  Stay tuned!

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Chesapeake Valley SWEETENERS has finally settled on a name and is nearing completion

Lots of tedious work this week on the facility and the name has changed again.  Decided to settle on Chesapeake Valley Sweeteners based on another "sweetener" plant in upstate NY.  Sweeteners Plus is located in Lakeville, NY and the website has some good shots of the facility.  Most of my buildings are scratchbuilt and when you have a small railroad like me, you have to fit them in the space you have.  I also heard from someone in the MR business that you layout should not look like the Walthers catalog.  Walthers does make some great kits but do some kitbashing for a truely unique structure.

Yep, my work desk is a mess and this is a good size structure.

Painting on the front porch.  My layout is as soon as you walk into the front door so this is convenient.  That's not one of my good chairs!  Settled on this yellow.

Looks good under the lights.  The downspouts will hide the seams.  It will hold 3 tank cars.

The facility as of yesterday.

Today consisted of adding and gluing the roof on and adding doors and windows.

The white roof looks good and I wanted a flat roof on the left to add blowers and such.  Might go with the white flat roof instead.  

Close up of the office.  I still have to add a small awning in the office.  Might do something else.  

The roof of the loading building is huge.  All Pikestuff materials.  

These wood strips will help hold the roof of the loading barn,

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Lower level work has begun and so has the helix

Started packing my On30 items up yesterday and clearing them off of the lower level.  I had a On30 layout underneath Battlefield Yard and did an expansion past my work desk and under the VC yard.  Check out the older posts of the On30 layout:

http://virginiamidlandrr.blogspot.com/search/label/On30

The On30 track was all laid out and functioning.  It's nice because the track is the same as HO track and I can get a feel of what I have by running my HO trains down there.  I still have to take out the On30 track eventually.

VMID #281 giving me a feels of what lies ahead of the VM.  You can see BY directly above it. 

The other end.  There is a bridge crossing a canal between the 2 pictures.  The sand load spur will probably be where the hoppers are at the end.

Here's my helix in it's beginning stages.  Wanted to work in the garage but the near 0 degree temperatures made me stay inside.  the Helix kit is by Ashlin Designs out of Utah. 

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