Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge

[TMo]

As it can from time to time, real life interferes with model railroad progress.

I'm still working on the brewery signs, but I also picked up some 3/4" foam panels from Home Depot the other night on the way home from work.  These came 6 to a pack and were 48" long.  I'm sure a lot of you have had similar experiences, but cutting foam board on a table saw can be problematic.  The stuff will bind quickly, especially if you're cutting freehand without a fence.

The stuff came in 14" wide pieces, so I did some cutting and hacking to make the base layer that went over the new section in front of the backdrop.  I then cut some smaller places and layered them with the tallest of the layers closest to the front of the section to give the impression that there's a hill falling away from the front of the section down toward the backdrop.  I then roughly positioned the structures I wanted to use and started playing around with potential roadways.  All of the styrofoam panels will be covered over (eventually with plaster cloth and Sculptamold once the terrain is finalized).

       

I still need to hack down some of the styrofoam with my foam cutter - especially as I approach the breaker and tie that terrain to the new area, and I'm still considering moving a good many of these structures, but the basic ideas are there to play around with over the weekend.  One decision I have to make is how to layout the roadways - informally or in blocks, but I am planning some sort of receding roadway running down toward the rest of the town in the backdrop that'll be roughly parallel with the backdrop and will disappear behind some sort of fence or rock outcrop or a wall or trees or shrubs.  The rest of the roads will be spurs off of that main roadway heading to the individual structures.