Again With the Benchwork

I troweled a layer of spackling over top of the wooden base and smoothed everything out. I also picked up a quart of sand-ish colored latex paint which will be my base earth color....

You can see some of my reference photos that I'm collecting too (thank you flickr!).

I had also picked up a new DC throttle off of ebay. Yeah, yeah, I know DCC is the rage, but it's expensive and this layout isn't exactly a multi-engine operating estate. DC is fine, and as long as it runs the engines reliably and slowly I'm happy.

The Varipulse 851 is supposed to do just that. It seems picky about how clean the track is and also how well the motor of the engine is in condition. I've gotten a better feel for it, and I get pretty decent results, though it can stutter or stall on a dirty spot of track.