I am in the process of planning my first layout in 20 years or so. I am wondering about ideas for making small undulating type grades. The layout will be a shelf type with a flat plywood base. I am modeling Northern Illinois and Iowa. I was thinking of carving pink insulation board to create slight hills along the right of way. There is also one bridge with a branchline passing over the mainline. I thought I might carve sections of the insulation to build up the grade rather than use a bridge and pier set. Has anyone tried this? Most of the layout will be flat except for a river crossing which I will try to replicate by cutting out a section of the base and building the river valley below the level of the main layout. Any ideas? Thanx:tb-err:
From the description of what you want, I think I'd simply make your base out of the pink foam board. This would let you add foam board to go above grade, or carve into the base to go below grade......if you go up AND down you end up with greater variation and a more realistic look.
It would be really easy to make small undulating grades by using extruded foam as your sub-roadbed. The sub-roadbed for my small N-scale layout is foam. It's flexible enough to make grades very easily. It the photo below, you can see the blue foam sub-roadbed elevated with risers made from pink foam. My whole layout is cookie cutter constuction using foam. Here's an early photo just after I made the major cuts in the top layer of foam. - Jeff
