About a month after starting the construction of this layout, I completed a basic turntable. I wanted to have one for this layout, as a challenge to myself, because I had never constructed a turntable. The actual construction of the turntable is a separate article on this web site. On March 20, 2006 I glued the turntable to the roadbed, so they are now one piece.

I installed a Miniatronics lamppost to light up the turntable in case of nighttime operations. This was connected to the 12-volt accessories line that was installed under the roadbed.

Almost a year later, I came back and finally put some real scenery on the turntable's surface. Additional spurs were installed so that I could store an engine or a car off of the turntable.

On February 17, 2007 I finally completed the Woods Furniture factory. I placed it in the back, right-hand corner of the layout. It has its own legs so it can be independent of the layout. I devoted all of my modeling time for three months to this project, and you can see the entire process from the beginning on the Woods Furniture Factory diorama page. I absolutely enjoyed it; it was the highlight of this layout. It gave me a lot of positive desire toward scratch-building and kit-bashing my structures in the future.

I made the turntable bridge big enough to turn one 2-8-8-2, a freight engine and one car, or even a switcher engine and two 40-foot cars, as is shown in the next photo. It was tight, but doable.

This is what it is all about for me: great photographs of wonderfully running equipment surrounded by nice scenery and structures. These Atlas GP7s (I had three of them) were my workhorses for testing my trackwork and running the layout.

This March 31, 2008 photo shows how I occasionally worked on upgrading the Woods furniture diorama on the layout with more details, cars, and trees.

The scenery on the right-hand side of the layout is coming along nicely, as shown in this photo. The debris under the trees comes from tea. I drink a lot of organic herbal teas (bought raw, not in tea bags). After the tea has been used, I dry it on a paper towel. When dry, I place it on the layout and glue it in place with diluted white glue in a spray bottle.

This low-angle view shows the activity taking place on the platform around the Woods Furniture factory.