Garden works, part 4: testing the initial layout

Another weekend with some very nice weather gave the opportunity to make more progress on my garden train. I've already managed to fill the gaps in the ballast with some extra stones, and the next step was to lay the track. Here's what it looked like at first:

I was surprised by how nice it was right at the start. Of course some of the track was flying in the air due to an uneven distribution of the ballast...

...and I spent some significant time trying to correct that by adding or removing grit from the bed. But once I got it to a satisfactory level the track was pretty stable and looked even better.

 

Of course it's not all roses. The track is still not perfectly flat and the longest straight section is not really that straight as can be seen in this photo:

I'm not sure what to do about this. I'm not even sure whether I should worry about this at all. I think I'll take another look at the issue once I have some more track.

And yes, more track is exactly what my layout needs now...

Here's a video showing my train going around this very, very small loop: