Procrastination, mental blocks, a river update and a new tunnel too!

Yesterday I realized I have been procrastinating.  I have been largely focused on completing my min line, building benchwork segment by segment, laying track, wiring, testing, and on to the next segment- but I have stalled.  The past few days have seen me disassemble a minitrix BR class 3.10 completely, fiddle with the innards, reassemble and repeat about 10 times.  I'll post a review of this locomotive eventually but the sort version for now is this:  It's always been a poor runner, I took it apart to make it better, broke it in three ways, and then spent days sorting it out.   The story has a happy ending thanks to my wife, who in her spare time used to make jewelry and so had the patience and know how to mend my mangled drive rods.  Anyhow, point is, I allowed myself to get hugely distracted and put off the ongoing track project.  I should add, I am really keen to get my track sorted, I can't wait till it actually forms a loop and I can run some trains about without the contant worry of something flying off the table.

So, what's the hold up?  It's me.  To lay the next bit of track I need to cross my river, which means my viaduct needs to be in place, which means the viaduct piers and abutments need to be in place, which means the river needs to be in place (unless I plan to add it after the bridge is fixed, which seems misguided), which means the river banks need to be there, which means the hillside that slopes into the banks needs to be there, which means the hill in the corner probably needs to be there- and I've not built a real hill yet.  And that is the blocker.  Building the hill.  I'e had some abortive attempts at making mountains before, and the product has always been lacking.  Now I'm facing with building a hill on my 'real' layout, the one I want to keep, the one that must be good, and so I've been paralyzed for fear of fucking it up.   I've watched videos, read blogs, looked at photos, gone to a forest to collect dirt and rocks, and done everything else short of actually doing it that I can think of.  

Having realized this I decided to just plunge in.   In the worst case I'll rebuild it many times and it'll eventually be good, and in the best case it'll be good enough for now.  So here I go:

I used cut styrofoam sheets to delineate the internal tunnel shape for the track inside, and then balled up wrapping paper (visible in the back right) to form a shape and went at it with plaster cloth.  I intend to make the tunnel top a removable segment, though I've not worked out how yet.  We shall see.  I have found that any inaccessible track invariably goes wrong, gets dirty or finds some other means to have issues.

In my river, I used that green foam for flower arraigning to form a base and have been casting rocks for my banks.  Had I done this before I would have started in the back and worked my way forward, oh well.

I removed my placeholder plywood bridge (which seemed like a good idea but actually provided no benefit) and put the real one in.  Painting back there will be really hard, but at least the reach in is only 24".  

Here's my tunnel portal on the opposite side, just sitting loose, so I can get a sense of it.  You can see the white edge where I've been sanding the walls so they fit flush.   My mossy wall was a happy surprise, I accidentally dribbled some glue, it didn't clean up well, so I dusted the wal with ground cover to hide it and made it better, I think, in the process.  

This will look good one day.  Just you wait and see!

And finally, comments for the blog are now enabled!  Seems they were off by default (thanks Jerry!), so please feel free to add what you will.  I've made it as easy as possible, no 'verify you are a human number codes' or delayed posting.  We'll see how it goes.  Provided I'm not spammed into oblivion I'll leave it as accessible as possible, so you have no excuse!