Scenery

Updated Oct 15/09

Description:
Number of Pictures: of

The scenery base is made from foamboard cut with a kitchen knife and glued together with white glue . At this stage, I haven't glued the pieces in place on the layout. It will be a lot easier to do the final shaping off the layout (and close to a vacuum!).

I was thinking of different ways of separating the On30 and On18 portions of the layout when it occured to me that a small creek or stream would do the trick and would tie in to the waterfront planned for the work shelf. It would also give me the opportunity to model a small trestle. So I started to hack away at the open area between the two sections of the layout.

Working with a foam scenery base is really easy. The only tools I needed to roughly outline the shape of the scenery were a coping saw, knife, and rasp . I also thought I'd experiment with lightweight spackling compound along with joint compound to build up rocks and ledges.

At this point, I haven't fixed the scenery in place. It's a whole lot easier to work with if I can lift out a section at a time and take it into the garage rather than having it on the layout.

I planned to have a sliding shelf for a work area which was also going to serve as a waterfront scene. I then mounted a sliding keyboard tray under the work shelf to be used for my control panel. Finally I decided to make a waterfront diorama mounted on runners to swap for the work shelf when I'm operating the layout. I think it will be easier to build the diorama off the layout rather than in place.

Evolution of a cove: My plan to separate the two portions of the layout with a creek or stream simply did not work - everything would have been jammed together too tightly. So I opted for a scenic divider in place of a creek and developed the front as a cove bridged by a trestle. I used clear casting resin for water. However I wasn't happy with the divider between the two portions of the layout so I went back to the beginning and used rocky scenery for the separation. Pity I hadn't planned for it from the outset!