Hey guys, thanks for your quick response on laying track. Here of pictures of my track plan. Any feedback would be nice. I want to make sure I do this right before i glue everything down. Attached are pictures of what I have done and the original track plan. The pink foam in the back is just temporary till i am ready to glue everything down. Thanks, Mike
PAINT THE FOAM first before laying down anything. Pick a mid brown earth color. This way if there spots that you miss, e.g., laying down turf, they won't stick out like a sore thumb!
That will work too but it'll be harder to draw on it as you lay your tracks. Also, as you work on the layout things tend to get messy so you may get spilled paint, plaster drops, etc. that may muck up your mat.
yeah, i was thinking about that. What if I saved the mat for last laid it around the track and add some flock where its not covered.
It looks good so far. I can't wait to see some hills built up with foam. -I noticed you have a switch coming off from the middle of the curve. you may already know this, but I thought I would mention it just in case. Atlas switches are slightly longer than an 18" curve peice. you will need to put a small piece of straight track into the other curve to make it match up. -Grass mat is ok. Chances are you'll discover that painting, as has been suggested, and then using ground foam/flock will look better in the end. It is of course a matter of taste, but as you get deeper into this hobby your standards will get higher on what looks good. Just a suggestion. Keep us posted on progress.
I as well cant wait to add some hills and my mountain for my coal mine. =) I tried to make a hill the other night out of a few layers of foam but i failed horribly, now im a little discouraged but when I get back home for my easter break and summer break I will try again. I'm pretty much done for now, I dont have the coal mine so I cant plan on were my mountain is going to go and I dont want to start sanding the foam down till I have everything placed. Btw i think its 1 1/2 inch piece of track to make both of my curves match. I was thinking grass mat in terms of how much money I have to spend, it seems like I will be buying a lot of flock to cover my layout since I am thinking most of the area is going to be grass, with some dirt roads going to some buildings and the coal mines. I do like the look of flock compared so foam, I am going to a train show tommorrow so I will see what deals I can get, If there arent any I will wait till the time comes to see what I want to do, as of now I am still far off. I need to wire those switchs, build my buildings(first i need to buy some) and then flock and ballast everything. P.S. I might get to superelevate my curves tomorrow when i get home. I was reading the article from my other post Im a little intimidated. I'll make sure to keep you guys posted on the progress. As well on the DCC system i am planning on building =) that is gonna be fun =/ -Mike
Mike, "flock" is cheap and you'll be surprised at how little you need. The big size container from WS with the shaker is about $7 each. My guess on the size of you layout is you'll probably only need one, perhaps two at most. Yes, you'll need other stuff like foliage, ballast, foam "dirt", under brush, etc. so they do add up but speaking purely about grass, you won't need much.
Alright. I just got back from the train show. Some neat stuff..I almost want to switch to N scale...I think i will after this layout. There werent to many deals, I found a Dash 9 conrail engine for 8 bucks, but didnt purchase it, it seems a little to big for my layout. I found a few DCC equipped engines for 30 but nothing i was to interested in, for the most part i dont even have a dcc system =( I did get a nice proto hopper kit for 5 bucks. Off to work on my layout.
Just a quick update, not much has changed on my layout since i last posted those pics, its still pink =( but much of the track has been set and i am working on putting some flex track down, i have shaped some rock formations, and working on my grassy hill area. I have greatly under estimated the space on my layout and I dont think there is much room for a town. I think I might add a cement factory instead or a grain elevator, i'll post some pics maybe later in the week, I would like to get the hills done.
any progress is good progress It never fails that no matter how much "extra" room there appears to be on paper once you actually lay track it seems to mysteriously disappear. I honestly believe that is how layouts end up looking like spaghetti. Even when planning a rural layout it can end up looking urban. So did you decide to use super elevation or not? There are strong opinions for pro and con on that. I have found that for hills I like to shape them off the layout before attaching them to the scenery base. Just easier for me to manipulate the foam without banging my surform or rasp into the track.
I didnt go with the super elevation it doesnt seem that hard but for the size of my layout and amount of track I dont think it will help all that much, even more I think it might do more damage than good. As I working to finish this for the summer and begin planning out my next layout [somewhat bored with this one and running trains gets boring I like building things =) ] I will plan to have super elevation on my next layout and fix some of my faults. I hope in the next few hours my hills will be done and I can add some paint, I should have some pics up tonight if not tommorow at some point. Going to the hobby shop tommorrow =)
