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     The King Delta & Valley Junction
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April update

We have been pluggin' away like crazy since early February. We were planning our annual St. Patrick's Day party and since that is one of our "non-railroad folk" shindig's, I went maddog to get a lot done on the layout.

I wanted to at least get the rough foam landscape for the second deck in as well as the upper backdrop installed.

Well we trudged along so nicely that we ended up getting not only those items ready, but also used up our entire supply of BRAGDON'S Geodesic foam system to bring the mountains to life, painted the backdrop blue and extended the upper track in time for our party.

Moments before a 2o" X 3O" Bragdon foam panel is installed

Soon, after the party, I continued with the upper mainline and finished the r-loop through Rockridge.

This is the first meet up of the work train and our first Revenue Passenger train. This is also the site of the future 20 stamp mill.

While I was pushing hard on the rough'scape and track work, my construction foreman continued to pester me to start the upper valance. I told him to do it himself and leave me to the track work and now the rest is history

A Not-so-finsihed valance.

A finished valance with my Lionel A.T.& S.F. 3751

At this point the construction phase of the KD&VJ Rwy is finally over.
With the valance, lighting, night time lighting( we are using blue rope light and wow does it look great) and the mainline r-loop finished, it was now time to go back to designing and that is where we are in this last set of pics.

Rockridge

 Rockridge is the small mining town located at the terminus of the layout, far right on the upper deck. The reverse loop runs under the town. Rockridge is host to a 15 stamp mill based on the Carson Hill mill near Angels Camp, CA.

This is a mockup of the mill. There is a planned 15 stamp crusher higher up to the right that will transfer the crushed ore via an enclosed conveyor belt. Carson Hill was one great looking complex and I only hope I can do it justice. I am happy enough with the mock-up that I will probably leave it in this state for quite sometime.

Oh yeah, the engine's are on lease from Colorado. The KD&VJ Rwy is currently running with borrowed engines( and on borrowed time if they don't start creating some kind of revenue) until a few "California" class 2-8-0's can be acquired & DCC'ed
 

So we have now finished the complex mock-up at this point.  the 15 Stamp crusher has a through track for the mine train. Crushed ore will be transferred to the mill via the conveyor spanning between the buildings. 

And below is a pic that shows both the mill mockup and a copy of the picture of the Carson Hill mill, from the book "Gold Mines of California" by Jack Wagner.

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