June progress

 I have some little pieces of progress to report at this point

 1. Highway embankment - I finished the remaining sections of guardrails as well as grass and ground cover for the slopes.  These are done, for now, until I get to more details (road signs, lights, etc)

 2. Steel mill and track bumpers - what they don't tell you when you build the Walthers blast furnace is that eventually, you're going to have to build parts of it again.  It's nearly impossible to keep all those pipes from coming loose at some point.  I left this until I had it in place on the layout.  It's not easy fitting some of these together, but I feel like I've achieved a balance of solidity (sections secured firmly together and to the layout) and flexibility (the ability for some to move if I bump into them).  I still want to add more piping around the scene but this is good progress.  I also added some track bumpers to the ends of the sidings.

3. ANOTHER house - I still have room for more houses!  And I feel like I'm not packing them together like one would in a very urban setting (it's supposed to be suburban, hence a little more space around each).  This one is the Miller house by Lionel.  Lionel started making some HO scale stuff, supposedly they bought out the old Model Power line.  This was a nice kit, the parts fit together well, it's a little toy-ish but I painted all the parts to tone it down a bit.  With a few more details they'd be at the level of a Walthers kit.  But a nice, classic colonial style house for the neighborhood.  I have room for at least one more.  In the first photo you can also see the 2-bay Norfolk Southern hopper car I added to the fleet.  It's a Walthers Mainline model, which I find to be a good mix of detail and affordability.

What's next - securing buildings around the steel mill and putting down more ground cover.  Buying and building another house, which hopefully will be enough for me to finally start planning out sidewalks and driveways.  And I should probably start thinking about more photo backdrops for these scenes.