I have to tell you – I’m having so much fun as a member of the Eagle Rock Railroad Historical Society! I’ve made new friends, we’re having a great time working on the layout, visiting, and laughing and joking. On top of that, I’m learning a lot about what Idaho Falls was like decades before I was born.
This week, Vet continued laying ballast on the yard tracks and the mainline track that runs through the yard, and working on ground cover just south of the stockyard.
Meanwhile, I worked to add a gravel lot to the south end of the stockyards, where trucks would deliver cattle and feed. I used a mix of ground cover that Vet mixed up to be more of a grey/gravel color. The glue was still wet in this photo, it should dry lighter than this. This week I’ll add a few weeds to it.
While the glue for the styrene base under the gravel was drying, Tim and I worked to just clean up the Eagle Rock area of the layout. Eagle Rock was the original name of what became Idaho Falls. To give you an idea of where it was located, Broadway and the Idaho Falls Public Library now occupy some of that land.
The Eagle Rock area on the layout is still a work-in-progress, and we’ve been making some plans. In the meantime, however, it had just gotten pretty dusty (that happens), so we took some time to clean it up a bit – wiping down the sidewalks and sweeping the streets with a couple of dry paint brushes.
Currently, most of the buildings are placeholders, and the space is compressed. The goal is to give the general idea of what this part of downtown Idaho Falls looked like in the mid 1950s. Although I’ve made it my personal mission in life to make sure the Rio Theater is represented.
While Vet worked on the ground cover near the yard and Tim and I cleaned up downtown, Dave was busy actually working on the railroad! He spent the evening (and actually some other time during the week) replacing some bad turnouts (switch tracks) in the yard near the loco servicing facility.
To finish out the night, I decided to add some ground cover inside the stock pens, so that it didn’t look like the cows were standing on grey plastic. Next week I’ll add a few weeds in (but not too many, the cows would probably eat them after all). I also have some HO scale hay bails on order to help finish out the scene.
Tim had also made some more beautiful trees, which I promptly forgot to take photos of. I’ll have to remember that this week. Sorry Tim!
The Eagle Rock Railroad Historical Society, Inc meets every Thursday night at 7:30pm in the basement of the Idaho Falls Parks & Rec building. Come pay us a visit!
