What is the best way to build a mountain with a tunnel for a o gauge 4x8 layout. I’m wanting to build it in the corner. I’m new at this, so any help will help me. Thanks
Don’t use wire mesh unless you want to mess up your TMCC command signal. Built up layers of extruded styrofoam is probably the easiest way to go. The foam layers would look sort of like a layer cake. You can carve the stuff with a long bladed hobby knife or with a wire cutter. I’ve “painted” over the styrofoam with diluted hydrocal to give it a rock like texture and then painted it with acrylics.
I’ll toss in my often-repeated recipe for a quick and easy tunnel.
Make a sandwich of newspaper and flour-water paste. Drape it over a pile of boxes and other junk shaped vaguely like the mountain you want. When it dries, remove the junk and glue in sticks as props wherever needed to hold it up. Cut tunnel entrances. Paint.
The surface will wrinkle up as it dries, creating a texture not unlike a mountain and looking less like the junk that you put under it than it did before.
Boy, there are so many ways to do this. I wanted a more ‘toy- train’ look so I cut up a standard size cardboard box, stacked a smaller box atop it, Draped layers of green terry cloth (from towels) over it, stuck in a few trees and viola! Just what I wanted. You can use plaster of paris, all sorts of spackle compounds, cut-down ceiling tiles…
There are many different ways to do this so the definition of “best” needs to be broad! I have taken newspaper or old blue prints (telling my age here) and wadded them up into balls. Placed the balls in a pile behind some tunnel portals which I either made or purchased. Do this to get the basic form of the mountain… some rough shape you like! Then I covered the paper wads with plaster cloth dipped in water. Two coats of the plaster cloths run at right angles helps to give some strength. Then some sort of coating with just plain plaster or one of the numerous materials out there will give you a nice base. You can add carved rocks, carve you own rocks or decide to make a pleasant hill in lieu of a rocky tor. You might want to spend some time at the scenicexpress.com or woodlandscenics.com sites and see just what they have. I know folks in HO who take brown paper bags and form them into the basic shape and just coat the bag with plaster of paris. Works fine. I’ve included a few photos of a corner I spent a bit of time on to provide a raised area for a small village. There are a lot of ways to do this. The plaster cloth in available at many hobby stores and some folks get it at medical supply stores. I was trying to make portions of my mountain removable which you can see from some of the photos. Just make sure you can get those paper wads out through the portal or from below. Happy mountain making… it is fun. Sloppy but fun!
