April 4, 2010

I wanted to allow plenty of time for testing track before I start covering things up with scenery. Because of the way I constructed my layout, there is no access to wires once the scenery is in place. This area of the layout has no turnouts, but it does have two tight curves. I wanted to make sure that there were no problems with operating the equipment I have. However, should I ever have any problems in the future, I'd have no problem with removing sections of scenery, fixing the problem, and replacing the scenery again. Scenery is relatively disposable in my view of the world.

One thing I have learned from previous layouts is to start from the back of the layout and work your way to the front. I want to show some rolling hills in this part of the layout. My preferred method for building hills and mountains is to use strips of cardboard. Those need to be glued to something. The way I designed my layout, the blue-sky backdrop is a removable section (it holds the layout's lighting and needs to be removable for future transportation). Because of that, I had planned on using Masonite hardboard as a support piece against which to glue the cardboard strips, so that the backdrop can be removed without destroying the scenery.

The photo below shows a sheet of Masonite hardboard placed against the backdrop of this part of the layout. The black marker pen line drawn on it shows my initial plan for the shape of the hill that was going to be in this area. Since this area consists of two modules, a vertical line was drawn where the two modules meet. I then left that up for some time to help in visualizing what this part of the layout was going to look like if I were to fill up that three-dimensional space as drawn.

After looking at the real area I'm trying to model using Google Maps, and thinking that what I want to do in this area is to have lots of trees, I decided that a steep hill like that wasn't going to work. It would make the hill be too close to the track (a mistake I had made in an early version of the Bear Creek & Eastern N-scale layout), and it would preclude trees. I therefore decided to go for a much lower, rolling hills kind of a look. I got out another piece of left-over Masonite and drew a different, much lower-profile line on the boards. You might be able to make it out in this photo.

I then cut out the profile boards and placed them up against the backdrop. A small ruler is holding the boards up. I "lived" with this for a day or two to see if I liked this profile, and if I could visualize a nice rolling hill with lots of trees on it. Note that these boards will not be visible once the scenery base has been installed, so it doesn't matter what is on them.

When I made the decision that I was happy with the profile, I used a collection of left-over scraps of wood to form some supports to hold the profile board in place. These were glued together with wood glue first. Next, I glued them in place, gluing both the benchwork contact surface and the profile board surface. This means the board is in there good and solid, however, should I want a different scenery profile, I can use a hammer to quickly break them loose and remove the profile board.