Thank you, Craigslist!

Last night DairyStateMom, DairyStateKid-M, and I hauled home four slabs of 4x8 by 2 inch DOW Styrofoam XPS insulation board. I bought the material at a substantial discount from a guy who had it leftover from a siding job on his home. (The seller kindly helped make it easier to haul in our small vehicles by slicing it into smaller pieces under my direction, reflecting how it would be cut up for the layout.)

I'd been looking for a few weeks for a cheaper source of this stuff, the favored scenery and roadbed material for layouts. Now I have enough for the entire layout. I may need to get a bit more either half-inch, three-quarter-inch, or one-inch thick, but even of that I have some other leftover stuff courtesy of a friend.

The final benchwork section is about two-thirds finished. When it's all together -- this weekend, perhaps? -- I'll post pictures.

Now it's time for me to return to the track plan details. Of course it would have made sense to firmly work out the track plan before even building benchwork, but as I have reported previously, the benchwork was originally constructed with a completely different configuration in mind and only repurposed when I concluded I could do a lot better than the first configuration.

As for the track plan itself, I have compiled a ton of different plans from which I can draw particular concepts for the new configuration. I have a clear idea conceptually for the plan now, but precise elements remain to be developed.

If I don't have the plan finished by about mid-August, I plan to take my drawing supplies on a vacation and hope that by my return, those details will be sufficiently finalized to enable me to start putting down cork roadbed and track -- maybe even by Labor Day weekend!