Ciment St-Laurent - All Tracks Done!

The layout ready to receive the new cement plant concrete pad

Another big step has been made last weekend with the installation of rails on the cement plant main building. This structure was built on a large concrete pad with embedded tracks. We wanted to keep that look so a thick slab of sealed MDF was used to replicate it. Gluing the rails wasn't an easy task and at the end of the day, they aren't as straight compared to our usual standards, but no derailment nor any running issues after an entire operating session.

Lots of depth in the yard and under the plant.

Meanwhile, we have planned the next buildings to add to the cement plant, including the laboratories and the workshop. The big furnace and coal dump will be depicted on a printed backdrop for lack of space and to better reflect how things were back in the days. The plant is so huge that modelling everything as a flat would look absolutely overpowering for such a small layout.

CN GP9RM is taking over the plant switcher for a while

On a positive note, reaching that step where ever single piece of rail is in place and working has enabled us to start running trains there for the first time for a long while. The GP9RM was doing some switching duties while the new Rapido GE 44-tonner is getting a fresh coat of paint. More on that project latter, but basically, Ciment St-Laurent had a GE 45-tonner (a modernized one). The original goal was to use a Bachmann one but it proved to lack pulling power for our long cuts of cars. Also, adding DCC, sound, a keep alive, a gyroscope and some more weight in it was a nightmare, I've seen people succeeding in doing that, but that's a lot of work. For this reason, we decided to go with a Rapido GE 44-tonner. It's far more reliable and powerful. Perfect for our needs.

The return of gypsum cars really change the operation game

With these new exciting developments, we are now thinking about bringing back the gypsum and probably the coal traffic to the cement plant. When it closed by the late 1990s, they no longer used coal. At the end of the day, we may decided to backdate the layout from time to time and I see absolutely no reason not to have the full experience when switching Villeneuve. It really adds hours of operation without changing anything else.

The bagging plant waiting its final coat of weathering