This is a shot down 'Bank' street, showing the new parking lot.
This is a shot of the church after I added grass and shrubbery to the grounds to hide the blue foam board. The red Mercedes-Benz probably belongs to the Pastor!
An elevated shot of 'Bank' street showing the added ground cover. This area now looks much better than before.
Another shot of 'Bank' street, showing the hedges planted along the sidewalk in front of the parking lot. There are also more people on the sidewalk across the street, as well as more cars on the road. Business is picking up!
This final shot is the road at the front of the layout after I covered up the cork with painted cardboard pieces. This area, too, is now much improved.

A Santa Fe SD40-2 pulls a short stack train into Hillsdale Yard. The access road along the front is made of styrofoam inserts from Athearn Ready-To-Roll freight cars packages. I hot-glued them to the edge of the plywood the yard was built on, and painted them to look like a dirt road. In previous photos, they were still white, and the caboose track hadn't been finished yet. It now has full ballast, and the rails have been painted.
Here is a shot of downtown. The drunk seems to have fallen out of the Pub into the gutter! I have been actively adding license plates to my vehicles for added realism.
Here's a panoramic view of the city from across Hillsdale Yard. This is after I placed Faller hedges along the edge of the yard to hide the edge of the foam boards the city is built on.
The AP&W's work crew winds down another day.
This shows the Citibank after I added a parking lot beside it. The bank's manager thanked me.

TOWN PHOTOS

Here are some more photos of my layout. When it was in the hobby shop, it was accessible on three sides; the town end faced the store. In my basement, however, I obviously didn't have the same amount of space, and so I re-oriented it as shown. Also, the warehouse in the corner was on the other side; a used car lot was here when it was in the store. The owner of the car lot took his building, along with several other structures he built and placed on the layout, with him when the shop announced it's closure. The scenery, road and parking lot in this area were done by him as well. Most of the buildings along the front of the layout were my contributions to the layout, as well as the large building in the background. For the roads, I use cardboard; these are the thin "backer-board" pieces used to protect things such as etched-metal parts, packages of decals, etc. I get them from work and spray paint them flat black, or Floquil Grimy Black for parking lots. I then apply Woodland Scenics yellow or white striping. As you can see, we used blue foam board for the scenery base. In later photos, you will see how I covered up/hid much of this with scenery.