Lower level track laying and a custom car delivery

In my last post, I said I would have a post up by Sunday/Monday.  Well it's Thursday night and the post is finally here.  I had a sinus infection on Sunday and actually missed work on Monday.  So nothing got accomplished those two days.  Did get another snow day on Wednesday and got a little done that I had wanted to get done earlier on in the week.  The mainline is finished through the area I started on.  The mainline comes out from the helix and through the wall to the lower level.  It comes through a set of turnouts and continues to hidden trackage that leads west.

In this view, we are looking east towards the "hole in the wall".  The mainline is the trackage in the picture.  The roadbed on the right will lead to the branch line.

In this view, we see the hole to helix and the branch line trackage the bulkhead is on.  I will put a curved turnout where the foam starts for the runaround track for the branch line.

The mainline west.  There will be another turnout added for a runaround track for the branch line.   Tortoise switches were already installed for the On30 track.  I used the same basic layout I had so I did not have to move the Tortoises.

Norm Wolf did a custom MOW tie hopper for me.  He delivered it to me on Wednesday.  It's an Athearn blue box Ex SCL hopper.  Norm did a sensational job on it.

He even added a scrap tie load to the interior.

It will look right at home with my other MOW cars like the side dump car is coupled to.