Setup Day-1

Ooops -  No camera, my wife found it in the driveway!   But the day improved as I got to the Mall on time and met a bunch of the guys already there.  Carl, Paul, Andy, Art, Dennis, Tiny, Barry and more quickly arrived.  Scott, Ben, Mac, Norm, John, Plus Dick, Ralph and his friend from Michigan (Dick) dropped off track and trestles and bridges. Mike dropped of the Interactive control signs.  Keith from Mall Operations had the main deck all ready to go and brought out all the risers and did the final assembly on them.  The Mall has added some nice spot lighting which will really enhance the layout at night!  The larger main deck looked awesome!

  We all went to work like a bunch of elves and by 3:30pm we had all of the double main line installed.  All the tunnels and risers in place,  The major buildings positioned and the Circus and the Lionel Line laid down.

  Connecting all the track with those little screws is tedious and I truly thank the people who worked hard to do that!  Tomorrow, Dick and Ralph will return to connect up the elevated lines on all the low and high trestles and install the Thomas Line!  By tomorrow afternoon we should see the general shape of the whole layout  fall into place!   Today we did run a train all the way around the main line.  But the first train to run was the Lionel loop!  Congratulations you guys!

There is still much to do including wiring, lighting, electronics, structures and lots of detailing and decorating  but we got off to a very good start and tomorrow I promise to take a couple of pictures to show the progress to date.