hi, I hope someone can help, I have now built my benchwork, the size is 36"x72" and its N scale. my question is, now I have a sheet of 5/8" plywood down, what is better, just use the plywood as the base or is it better to put foamboard or homasote down on top of it? I was also wondering about 2" foan on top of it, any thoughts on this is greatly appreciated…
Either would bee fine. The point of foamboard is to allow scenic elements to go below the track without cutting into the plywood base. Though another alternative (Though it works on the same principles) is to use Woodland Scenics products (www.woodlandscenics.com) they make foam products specially made for model railroading. (Not that you cant use foamboard, these just have some extra conveniences throw in) And they also make scenery supplies. Though I’m not going to be using their foam products on my HOn3 layout, I WILL be using their scenery products.
Now is the time to figure out, just how much below track level do you want the absolute deepest part of the layout – river bottoms, culverts, trenches, gravel pits, whatever – to be? You don’t want bare plywood to be the bottom of a river etc but a light coating of sculptamold, as little as 1/16" can disguise the tell tale wood grain patterns. A little advance planning now will help you decide what you need on top of the plywood.
Stated another way are you modeling fairly flat Illinois/Wisconsin grainbelt terriory, or deeper river valleys or mountains? And don’t forget that sidings are supposed to be slightly lower than the main line. Get out the scale rule and figure out just what 1/2 homasote or 2" pink foam gets you.
Decision #2 is: do you elevate everything and then cut away what you don’t need? Or do you elelvate only what is high, such as the track and roadbed? Knowing that in advance can avoid a lot of wasted material and difficult cutting. Both homasote and foam can be rather nasty to cut inside the house. At least hot knives and wire work on the foam (remember the ventilation). Even knife blade saws result in dust with homasote. I do all my homasote cutting outside when I can.
Personally on my HO layout set in fairly flat parts of Wisconsin, I found that 1/2 homasote or 5/8" plwyood subroadbed PLUS cork roadbed gave me enough elevation for culverts, lowered sidings, and a modest amount of rolling land so that residential areas will not be pancake flat. For the creek valley and for an excavated underpass in my town I built special and slightly lowered David Barrow-style “domino” segments of benchwork just for those locations.
The Barrow system I use has two grids, the lower one is attached to the legs and it, and the legs, are always the same height, while the upper grid has the plywood top and can var