First ballast and first tunnel portal installed

The first bit of ballast has been glued down on the CR&E at John's Creek, VA.  I'm mostly happy with the way the ballast profile turned out, but the color is a little darker than I expected.  Future mixes of ballast will use some of Highball's natural limestone color to give the mainline a cleaner appearance.

I glue the ballast down by first soaking the ballast in alcohol, applied liberally with an ear wax removal dropper.  Then I come back with a 50/50 mix of white glue and water, applied liberally again out of the glue bottle.  I always soak between the rails first, allowing the alcohol and glue to soak into the ballast ledge, then carefully wet the outside of the rails along the tie line, then the base of the ballast where it meets the subroadbed, and finally in the middle of the ballast piles as necessary.  I use quite a bit of glue/water mix so it will be good and solid when dry.

The first tunnel portal has been fixed in place.  The west portal of John's Creek Tunnel has been plastered in, complete with ballast through the tunnel and a tunnel liner made of blueboard that I painted black.  I'm pretty happy with the darkness of the inside of the tunnel and now I'm looking forward to seeing trains run through it.

 In the top image, a westbound is emerging from John's Creek Tunnel.  The signal at Johns Creek will be just in front of the lead CR&E locomotive.  This angle is taken from the creek level.

In the bottom image, an eastbound clearance test train crosses John's Creek viaduct.  Although I don't plan on running stacks on the CR&E, I have set my tunnel clearances to allow them in case I change my mind.