I see your using my favorite tool for foam! I call it the "grader" , that yellow handled thingy for scrapin' foam. Works like a champ!
Looking good Hemi! Those grades look like they are not going to give you any problems. It looks you are going to have one heck of a scenery to track ratio! You have room for a really big town there. I can't wait to se what your scenic divide looks like! -Robert
It's in progress. I stacked the foam last night, so far, it's topped 10" high. I need to carve yet, so that will likely scale down quite a bit. Pics soon... Not a whole lot of room for a town after the continental divide goes in....
Hemi looks good! Looka like you got a good little helper! I have 3 boys at home the oldest is 7...they want to help...but ya got to keep your eye on them. I don't know if there is a quicker animal than a 2 year olds hand when it reaches to grab something. Good work!
Yeah, I think a 12-month-old is in the running for quickest sticky-fingers.... I almost made a booboo.. I glued the whole mountain stack up, and forgot to not glue it to the base. It has to be removable for ease of maintenace, cleaning, derailment cleanups, etc. I remembered just when it was about half-cured. Careful prying got the job done. Good thing the glue isn't more quick!
Carving ensued today, and additional land forming commenced! Getting closer to tracklaying time! I like doing scenic forming first--keeps the mess off the track!!! Future home of a wild mountain river: Tunnel area, will receive additional portal work, and a facade of sorts to separate the tunnels insides: More work to be carved: Opposite side of last picture: Overview of the upper & under side:
Looks great, between you and Chris, we are getting a lot of great ideas and techniques for future layout work! Thanks for sharing.
Hey, I'm learning this as I go... I figured installing landforms and rough-scenicking first is a good idea. Next time, I'm doing my N scale layout this way, too. The more I work ont his one, the less space I have at the bottom for a 2-track 'yard'... I may be down to 1 track... I bought some styrene sheet to build tunnel portals from, generally based off a D&RGW prototype, since I have dozens of pics of them to choose from... I'm also leaving a tunnel or 2 with bare rcut rock portals.
Great progress! You can always "Blast" room for the track with a steak knife to get that track back into the layout. -Robert
I haven't tried this yet, but here is a page on carving foam into rocks: http://www.hirstarts.com/tips9/tips9.html
New update: The mainline is complete! I laid it today, just to see if I liked my method of laying track with contact adhesive. The low VOC stuff didn't do too well, but I just grabbed my tube of Walther's Goo,a nd went to town. Since the cork roadbed was coated with dried (but slightly tacky) latex contact adhesive, it worked instantly. I ran an F7 with 2 boxcars around, using a 9V battery as power. Next time around, I'll be adding feeders and a bus wire to send power. It was so refreshing to see trains run!
Proof is forthcoming, gang.... I cannot believe I used that word is a sentence! And it's more than 2 syllables?!?
As shocking as it sounds, the first try in over 2 years resulted in no kinks, and the loop runs reliably so far.... Sorry for the lackof the scenic block--I forgot to reinstall it. The wires are ready for feeders to be soldered on....
