This is so much fun! Once I made a decision on where to punch the ridge through, tracklaying commenced almost immediately. My rationale was to locate the area where I felt accuracy was most critical, and start there. The ridge seemed to "the place"... so we have done it!I had to do a bit more recontouring of the summit area on the north side than I wanted to... but I felt that good trackwork was/is paramount to scenic authenticity. Those that have never been there or have never seen the DEM's will not know about the few contour shannagins I have used.Thus far, I have laid about 5-6 miles or more of track down both sides of the ridge. In fact, on the south slope, I'm already to the Big Piney watercourse! It will be pretty easy sailing all the way to Russellville/Dardanelle that direction. Northbound is a different story! Man this stuff is wonderfully rugged. (For the Ozarks.) At one point, I had to snake around and deep into a "holler" high above the floor, making a horseshoe turn to get back out... all on a 2.7% grade!The sections over this main ridge will likely have to be 25 MPH country on account of having to use tighter curves to get the rails bent and twisted amid the contours. Thus far, there's only one place that will have dynamic track: One leg of the wye at the summit. I hope to keep dynamic track usage to an absolute minimum. No "Yard Curves" or "Yard Switches" will be used anywhere.Test runs indicate that my route is going to be everything I had hoped it would... the mountains look SO much more impressive from the cab of a train as opposed to hovering above in the RE helicopter cam!In order to run longer trains with the aging 1st generation power of the KC&G, this will definitely be a helper district. (My test train consists of 4 engines and about 28 cars. The locos can start such a train on the grade... but you sure don't set any speed records crawling up it!) Well... back to the Ozarks for some more tracklaying!Quick question: Are the default 5d manual switches okay to use, or do I recall reading that there is a bug in one of them?Andre Ming
KC&G: Started!
Tracklaying: 5% complete.
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