Bulk Scenic Update

An update on the ongoing periodic dribble of scenic progress over the past month or two, as I don't remember where I left off in my dispatches...

• The church is in, but you knew that already
• There's a bit of foundation scenery going into the mid Meinreuss gorge area before tree-ing
• There is a road bridge in that gorge too. I used one of the cut-stone-style ones printed out for Wattinger. This one probably should be a concrete arch bridge, but it will be hard to see in there when the trees go in. 
• The hill in the distant corner of the pic below has had a bit of foundation scenery and mid-foliage added
• There's a wee bit of foliage and tree scenery by the (unfinished) tunnel portal at the far end of the middle level and in the Wattinger gorge under the road bridge
• But the main news.... (ta-da) is that the middle level has finally been painted and ballasted

Painting rails is a job always dreaded, and this was a fairly long stretch, but I put some music on and just plowed through the four rails-worth of work with a small paintbrush a week ago.

As you can see (or hopefully can't see) below, this time I remembered to add in a few fake sleepers under the rail joints. I always forget to do this on layouts and then grizzle about it later, as it looks so obvious when the ballast goes down.

Slow, but notable progress. The ballast really makes things look a lot better.