Yes, I am crazy ...

But I don't think there was any a question about that ... Here of some photos of the new trackwork I have been doing the last couple of days. I have put in two actual joints with the scale 39' rail sections, and I think it looks great, so far anyway ... Here is a bunch of photos, without a lot of explanation ...

 

 Well, as you can see on the left, that is a side view of the first joint, with the lengthwise view on the right. I think it is looking pretty good so far.

The photo below is the joint on the other side in progress and how it looks before the joint bar is installed.

 In the above photo, I hope you can see how the Sweepstick is helping this process.

Well, the photo on the left you can see the track shaping up and in the right photo, I wanted to show how I was tearing up the track on this section. I was not pleased with the fact that the rails were leaning to one side. With the modified Sweepstick, I now had the tool to correct the issue. So up the rail came!

Now on the right we can see some of the distressing on the ties as I have been going. Unfortunately, I don't have access to A&I, because my supply had dried up, so I have been staining these with MinWax ebony stain. You will be able to see some more in later photos ...

These are just a few more photos of the distressing and staining work ...

 

 Here is just a photo of me using the small stainless steel wire brush. It takes a bit of elbow grease to get a good level of grain, but as the photo below brings out, I really think the effect is excellent. The grain appears to be pretty close to prototypical as for relatively new ties.

These are still going to recieved a lot more weathering before they are going to be dubbed "done." I will hit it with another color of stain, as this is really meant to just pop into the grain to push it to the fore ...