I am building a small N scale industrial switcher out of two 1x6 modules. I am using plywood as the bench work. The problem is, plywood is not that good a scenery base. Should I just glue a piece of 1" foam on top of the wood? OR should I do something else?
Gluing a layer of foam on top of the plywood would be a good way to go. I have a layer of 3/4" think foam on top of the hollow door that is the base for my layout.
If you’re not planning on much in the way of contours, you could just give the plywood a coat of earth colored latex paint, then add ground cover (ground foam or other material) on top of the painted plywood.
Regards
Ed
I do HO but I have carved some mountains out of foam and glued them to the plywood. I have also used versions of ground goop to add small contours and as a base for ground foam.
One of the harder things to model is the gently rolling or irregular land of even a “flat” area. The perfect flatness of a plywood top, even if painted and sprinkled with ground foam, does not look very real. It is especially bad if the wood grain can be seen. But mountains and caverns carved out of foam might not be accurate for your modeled area, such as midwesterm farmland.
I am going to be experimenting with a technique I saw on a guy;s layout. As best I could figure, he took fairly thin slivers or wedges of foam – say the kind you can easily create using the Woodland Scenics hot wire foam cutter, gluing those here and there to the plywood, and then covering the entire area either with a layer of plaster soaked cloth or – perhaps using spray adhesive – with the sort of thin flexible foam sheet that home electronic items tend to get wrapped in, which would then be brushed with plaster. The main point of all this is the slight irregular appearance of little hills and dales, perhaps just a foot or two variance. If it is done right you do not notice that it does not go below “ground zero” – the plywood surface.
Dave Nelson
I use foam for even moderate changes in scenery. To model the rolling hills, like those here in Missouri, I used pieces of 2" foam with some lower 1" foam nearby. I glue both to the 2" foam base, then shape the pieces using a wire brush. To recreate the little vertical cuts that are caused by erosion, I just run the brush up and down. It’s pretty messy, though (but, you do have a shop-vac, right?). Depending on what kinds of details I’ll be adding, I’ll either cover it with a thin layer of plaster, or just paint the foam with acrylic latex. MAKE SURE YOU USE WATER-BASED PAINT, OR IT CAN ATTACK YOUR FOAM!! While the paint is dry, I sprinkle real sand and ground foam on it.
If I use plaster, I cover the seams in the foam with plaster cloth. While the plaster is still wet, I sprinkle dry plaster on it using a flour sifter. As with all projects, BUY YOUR OWN. Don’t use your wife’s good one from the kitchen.
I have found that a couple of inches of foam can be carved, scratched, whatever into realistic scenery. A small trestle going over a ‘stream’ also makes for some interesting scenery.
The main advantage to using even a single layer of foam is that it gives you the ability to cut, carave, or sand down from the 0 elevation to provide some variation from flat. The second reasom is to eliminate noise transmitted through and amplified by the plywood base. Also, don’t forget to paint both sides of the wooden frame and plywood base before you do anything else. Painting seals in and out moisture that will cause warping or twisting that will eventually reach the trackwork you have so carefully laid. I also like to paint the underside a light color to help me see wiring underneath in poor lighting. The contrast really helps.
my layout is plywood but i do it in the “cookie cutter” style…in other words, my layout has most of the track only on a plywood subroadbed that is only 2 3/4" wide attached to L girder frame benchwork by cleats and risers …for the scenery, i’ll put in contours, mountains, valleys, and the like, made from chicken wire or wooven strip cardboard overlayed with plaster cloth or strips of newspaper dipped in plaster that gets built up from the benchwork to the track …plywood as a single base for the layout is not prototype because it is so flat…even the ground in Kansas isn’t as flat as an entire sheet of plywood…chuck
How about just not using the plywood at all? Foam by itself works fine. And using two layers of thinner foam works well. You can cookie cutter the top layer to create elevated track and/or streams. Because the bottom layer is foam and not plywood you can poke wires down through it easily. No drilling required.
gh