Tomalco Track is alive and well. I ran out of flex track last week, so I emailed Larry with my order and received it in time for this weekend. Except for the engine/car service area, all track and turnouts are complete on the upper level. I think I'll let that go for a while so I can get all the drops finished. They're easy enough to do once I get started, but there's no visual impact from spending time under the layout like laying track has. There's a stretch of lower level benchwork still to be constructed. The reason I haven't built it yet is that I need to install a row of CFLs under the upper lever. By this time next week I hope to report that all the upper lever track is functional and the CFLs are installed. Since we foreshorten the distance between towns due to limited space, I'm finding that my helix does a great job of adding some realistic (boring) mileage. Maine has vast distances of flat terrain with nothing but trees. There's really no way to capture that on a model except the passage of time, and the helix does just that. For the time the train is on the helix, my role changes from engineer to station agent on a branch with no radios on the train. Unless a disastrous derailment occurs, the excessive passage of time would trigger the dispatch of a service crew from the other end of the line. Kind of neat really.
Ed Kozlowsky Sanford, Maine sscale.org
