At the end of February, I worked to locate the first turnout. The first one is the turnout at south end of Reeds to the Reeds Mill(s). This is south of the Reeds depot, and is the turnout before crossing over the “highway” in Reeds. The spur branched to the west, running along the road and then crossing over it to reach close to the mill(s). I keep writing “mill(s)” because there was more than one mill at Reeds. It’s not clear to me if the mill(s) generated lumber or mostly cordwood and/or pulpwood. More research is required.

This spur is important to me at this time, because it is to be the first turnout on the layout. The plan is to install the turnout and then lay track back toward Madrid. Once the track is in place I plan to run a few grade tests to ensure that this grand Sn2 layout is doable.

Another happening the past two weeks is that I decided lock (screw) the roadbed into the benchwork, abandoning the free-floating spline. This is for two reasons: 1) The roadbed continued to shift 2) the roadbed rocked/rotated. Neither situation seemed good for a stable operation.

Here are a few photo highlights from the past few weeks.

To anchor the roadbed to the brackets, I glued plywood horizontally to the brackets to form a “L”. The plywood was pre-drilled with 2-3 holes. Once the glue dried, I screwed vertically in to the spline to stabilize the roadbed.

Here is the spline for the spur to Reeds Mill(s). The spline for the spur is screwed to he side of the mainline spline.  The mainline is on a steady 1/7% upgrade.  The spur is close to level.  Oberton creek was just to the left of the railroad grade and spur.

The layout need to be wider than 16″ to support the spur in a realistic manner, so I extended the benchwork 4-6″. The extensions are glued on to the existing brackets. I notched the extensions by 3/8-1/2″ so that the grade of the spur would be level (the brackets are installed for the 1.7% mainline grade).