The first few photos show some recent progress on roads throughout the layout. I got all roads cut, painted, and striped, but haven't yet done any significant weathering. In addition to the road work in the area, I've also begun upgrading scenery between Bluffs Yard and UP's Pool Yard in Council Bluffs, and made the decision not to model the South Expressway as originally planned. More on that in the caption for photo #6 below.

The last few pics are related to my decision a few months ago to do away with Cass County Elevator in Atlantic - which has never been appropriate for my May 2005 era - and instead model a larger portion of the branch serving Harlan Elevator. The prototype Cass County Elevator was torn down in about 1996 - around the same time Harlan was built - but I could never find a way to model Harlan, since it's at the end of the approx. 2 mile long Atlantic Spur north of town, so I originally compromised on instead resurrecting Cass County. A few months ago, I finally realized that by moving the junction with Atlantic Spur further east toward Atlantic, where I had originally planned to model the E. Nishnabotna River bridge, I could model the branch with enough room to allow me to spot five cars at a time for Harlan, to be pulled up by their little GE 45-tonner. (Harlan Elevator itself is off-layout.) Still not a lot of car capacity for a modern grain elevator, but enough that it could load a layout-sized unit train with just two re-spots. This also let me extend the spur serving Pellett Petroleum, a local fertilizer dealer, and to more accurately model their facility.

Those changes not only allowed me to start switching Atlantic as the prototype did, but also meant I could correct my track schematic there. I stubbed South Siding just west of the old RI depot as was done on the prototype after Cass County's demise, allowing me to eventually model a long-time Atlantic fixture, spreader IAIS 9500, tied down there. I'm also taking advantage of this time to add #4 Track to Atlantic Yard. With these two changes, I've finally been able to do away with all but one of the remaining track schematic compromises on the layout. The only one that remains is the removal of a yard track and RIP track in Bluffs Yard in order to keep scene depth manageable there. I'm comfortable with that, though, since there's really no way to overcome it in HO scale without growing longer arms.