As I mentioned in a previous post, a prototype crossover south of the diamond at Doswell was not selected for inclusion when the track was laid in that area of the railroad.
The reason for it being left out was the fact that I thought it wasn't needed based upon our operating designs at the time.
After a few operating sessions were ran, I realized that leaving it out was a mistake and it needed to be installed.
As shown in the post about the September work session here I built a crossover and a work crew installed it. What was left to me was installing the signals to make it a control point, along with the LCC components.
The Signals for SB traffic were pretty easy - a BLMA/Atlas modern, 2 track signal bridge was installed. As a side note, it has been tough to source the BLMA now Atlas signals due to various production/transporation delays and I ended up finding a hobby shop in Canada that has them in stock.
You will note in that picture, a track behind the signal mast. That is the last little bit of main line before you enter the north end staging yard; the wall cutout is just to the right by a few feet from our view here.
This meant that closer to the removable bridge that spans the main entrance to the layout, there isn't the space needed to install one of these type of signal bridges and make it hang the heads over the correct tracks.
To the rescue was my collection of polystyrene shapes and boards. I've scratch built a few other signals bridge on the layout, but this was my first to go over 3 tracks.
I used the Atlas/BLMA heads vs fooling with building my own, as that takes a way more time that just building the structure.
I also got my airbrush out and painted it with Vallejo's Model Air Steel color - really brought it up a few notches in looks from the bare white of the plastic. It was so impressive that I went and painted the other previously installed bridges across the layout.
We will close this post with a nice high angle aerial view of the control point.
More pictures are in the gallery at richmond-terminal.org
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