Noah and I started building his new train table just before the new year. After consulting some books, I bought my first saw, a bunch of lumber and we were off to the races. The table is 14x7 feet and is about 40 inches high. The framing was done with 2x4's and the top is .5 inch honasote on .5 inch plywood. Since it is so big and heavy, it is actually made-up of 4 different sections which are fitted together.

There are 3 independent loops of track on the table that will each have their own train. Our plan is to have at least 2 major mountains with tunnels, a small lake, and several urban scenes. Everything is hooked up during the building process because Noah likes to run the trains every day. There currently ins't an estimated time of completion, but we work on the table a little every day.

- Week of April 5th - working on mountain structure and interior mountain painting and tunnel siding

- Week of April 20th - Began plastering mountain

- December 09 - I can't believe it's been a whole year. I am sure someone with any skill and a strong work ethic would have had this table finished by now but they aren't working on my table. Plastering took a bit longer than expected and was quite an undertaking. The worst part by far was mixing plaster and rocks I made to form a paste to fill in all the gaps on the mountain. What a mess. Anyway, I got the hang of it after a while and with all the plastering done, I almost have everything painted and have actually started adding some underbrush and ground cover to some of the areas.

- Jan 26, 2010 - I have made a big push to finish this since X-mas and am only a few days away. Painting went fine but was stressful along the way. I had the room completely covered in plastic in case one of the spray bottles exploded. Ground cover also went well and looks pretty good. Parking lots are in and streets are basically all done. I am working on small parts now and trying to logically finish off the remaining sections without boxing myself in the center of the table.