Yes, Jay is still working on his new train layout. While I’ve been working in my sewing room, he’s been trying to supervise and work with various construction units. This gets tricky, especially when you have to use units that are part of the union. *sigh* That really slows down the progress.

His first task was to do something with the pole in the middle of the layout.

You had a peek at his solution when I showed you his DIY Hot Wire Cutter. In case you didn’t see it, though, he decided to put a shoe on it.

His first thought was maybe leaving it as a nice strappy sandal, but in the winter that can be a bit chilly. It definitely needed covering of some sort.

As he started to place the plaster strips in place Jay decided that the next time he breaks his foot he’ll just make his own cast and skip the doctor completely. After all, look how beautiful his plastered shoe turned out:

Beautiful! It’s too bad we didn’t have another angle from which to view this beautiful piece of artwork.

How lucky! We do!

Fun fact: Not only can this plaster be used to shape shoes around poles, it can also be used to fill up holes behind posts so that you can more effectively fill the gaps with foam and prevent Starlings from building nests on your front porch.

(Another aside… the next morning I had a great time watching a Starling as he went to where the hole used to be… dropped to the porch floor with a confused look on his face and proceeded to walk around the base of the post as if to say, “This looks like the post. I swear we started building the nest right up there! Maybe I picked the wrong post…”)

Back to the basement.

You’ve already seen how the rock cut-outs were shaped beside this giant hill.

Then Jay slathered it in mashed potatoes. Oh wait, maybe that’s some of the left-over mud from the giant bucket I purchased for use in the sewing room.

Once that was dried, Jay iced it.

Seriously, every time I looked at it I started craving chocolate cake with chocolate icing.

Other times it made me crave a big bowl of chocolate pudding.

This isn’t the only hill on the layout, though. Nope. There are two more.

These are kind of the foothills of the large hill.

The hills are alive with the sound of train cars…

They also received the chocolate icing treatment.

Once the base paint was dry it was time to start adding a little bit of depth.

But wait, there’s more!

More rock cropping, that is. Jay was really rocking out on this hill.

Since there are cut-outs on this hill he also has to paint the rock face.

This requires a lot of color layering.

Not all of it is rock. There is some landscaping that needs to be done as well.

The initial grass seeding was laid down. Once the roots have started to take hold you can add a little more to it.

As you can see in these pictures there are other things going on, but I’ll showcase those in other posts.