Thank you, Bill, Neal, Dan, Rick!!
Bill, you never know what Santa might bring! 
You built some great looking kits. I'm hoping to require some of the skills I had when I was younger.
Dan, I want the ballast to look like it is a well maintained single-track mainline from the '50s, so I am going to wait until I have a scenery base and the rocks and foliage done before ballasting. When I did it the other way around, I had to put tape over the track and ballast to finish the scenery. Inevitably some other scenic materials would get through. For a little used branch line that would be okay. I think I'll ballast in stages as I get sections of scenery 'completed', to save the monotony of doing a well maintained looking ballast job.
Rick, you have a whole lot more wiring to do than I had. Yes, I can see where what you are doing could get old.
