I have been reading many articles about using stacked styrofoam for the ground work. Would this be a good sceary tool for modeling the great lakes region? I want to have some ground contour but no mountains, I will have a lot of roads and maybe a river or stream that the railroad will cross. Thoughts?
Do you apply the roadbed directly on to the styrofoam or is a wooden sub-roadbed required? All of my previous laouts have been on plywood sheet. Thoughts?
There really isn’t a right and wrong to this one. You could use wooden sub-roadbed if you wanted to, but there is no need to. Extruded foam boards are rigid enough to lay your roadbed right on them.
Whether or not foam boards are a good scenery tool depends on you. I personally find it very easy to work with, albeit somewhat messy (although that’s easily fixed with a shop vac). The primary advantage it has over plywood is the ease with which you can make features “below” ground level. If you take 2 1" thick sheets, and use one for the base and a second on top of it with the river / stream bed cut out, you instantly have terrain elevated above your river bed without taking a sabre saw to your table top. You can use newspaper and plaster cloth or more foam and Sculptamold (or plaster, or ground goop, or whatever). to make the undulations in your terrain.
I use 2-inch pink construction foam for my layout. It is easy to work with, and it allows an easy buildup of contours. I usually use plaster cloth over the foam contours to smooth out the slope and give a better base for the ground material to follow.
You can glue track directly to the foam, but for most rail lines the use of roadbed (cork or foam) will give you a more prototypical contour. One of the nice things about roadbed-over-foam is that it’s easy to carve a shallow drainage ditch alongside the track.
I use the white 2" foam, its not as strong as the “pink stuff” but I get it cheap. I have been using foam for years and I like to think I was ahead of the curve a little. My first big layout built back in 2004 was all done right on top of white foam.
I have just used cork or in same cases track right down on top of it… Glue or pinned. Foam has a A LOT of advantages that I love.
Anything specific ask away and I will give all that I have learned. Below in my signature is a link to my latest layout build on foam. Might give you some ideas or insight.
One consideration with foam is some extra work with mounting under-table turnout controls/motors or using screws.