What's in Lovelock ?

From my study of the line I am modeling I know the local that went west from Carlin Yard was called the Lovelock local.  Lovelock is another small community along Interstate 80 between Winnemucca and Sparks.  Recently I got to thinking for the Local to be named that it must go all the way to Lovelock and there must be some sort of industries there.  So checking on Googlemaps I found out that just east of Lovelock there is one major rail served industry called EP Minerals.

EP Minerals appears to be processing center and truck to rail transfer site.  In the satellite view I can see as many as 14 covered hopper rail cars and at least one open hopper tractor trailer.  Some further internet research discovered the product processed there is something called Diatomaceous Earth.  This is used in many products and processes including filtration, paints, rubber, and dynamite.

The western end of this layout is at Winnemucca so Lovelock is well outside the modeled area.  However when I run my version of the Lovelock local I run it back to the staging yard.  So, I got to thinking why not simulate the industry there in the staging yard.  That would add to the interchange traffic between the local and the manifest freights in Carlin.

I have a number of Southern Pacific covered hoppers that could be appropriate for this industry.  Most of these are Delaware Valley cylindrical covered hoppers that I have had for almost 30 years. So I made car cards for all of these and made a car holder for the siding in the staging yard that will represent this industry.

For the waybills I decided to focus on the paint industry for now and found a few paint factories around the US.  Again on Googlemaps I was able to verify the presence of covered hopper rail cars at 3 different paint factories and made waybills with these industries being the customer.

The Carlin foot bridge - part 2

Way back in May I had started a model of the foot bridge over Carlin Yard.  The link to that post is HERE.  I finally got back to this project recently.  I ended up using Plastruct railings for the bridge and a left over support from the Walthers Glacier Gravel kit was used as mid span support.  The prototype has more than one so I will want to add another whenever can I find another similar support.

The entire bridge was airbrushed a flat black color and a little dry brush weathering was applied.  Side walks were added to the bottoms of each stairway.

The areas of the stairway bases that were not painted concrete color got some scenery applied to match the scenery in the surrounding area.

Fall 2022 layout update

This month marks the 8th anniversary of the layout.  A lot has been completed over that time but still plenty more to do.  Over this past year or so most of the attention has been on the 11+ feet of Carlin over two bench work sections.  I have also been operating the layout and developing an operating scheme using car cards and waybills.  Recently I have added car card holders to all of the spurs as well as for the arrival / departure track in Carlin yard.

The scenery is continuing with the back edge of the Carlin section has being finished and blended in with the back drop shown in the photo below.  The area around the river between Carlin and the Palisade tunnels is in progress now.

With all of the track work in Carlin now done, next will come finishing industries, structures, and adding details.   Recently I added some 3D printed wheel stops to the ends of all of the spur tracks in Carlin.