Monday, August 11, 2008

Step 2 - The Layout "Rises"

I only had an hour to work on the beast (as I've come to affectionately refer to it) this evening. Work got in the way; what a pain!


Anyway, the next step was to take the track that I had so carefully lain out and pull it apart in large sections and set those aside. Next I took out the 2" risers and laid them out on the base according to the track layout. These will form the base of the track for the first layer. At first I thought I was reading wrong because I thought, "shouldn't the first layer be on the base?" But I soon saw the genius of their plan.


The whole first level will be two inches above the base so you can form rock walls, streams, etc, without carving into the actual base which is only 1/4" thick anyway. That is really smart and will make the layout look much more realistic instead of carving something in as an afterthought. So I got the risers all placed and pinned in. Tomorrow I will glue them down to the base with foam glue. Obviously, Woodland Scenics suggested "Woodland Scenics' Foam Tacks" to pin the risers into place while the glue sets, but I used Pamela's sewing pins and they worked great. They even came a handy tomato which I'm sure the "Woodland Scenics" ones would not have included!


Happy Trails!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hey Shammin Shayne, nice nick name. I finally decided to check out your blog. I love the train! I want to get into that eventually. Right now we're building up Tanner's hotwheel track collection. Check out this YouTube video of one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vuiWYh9T78

Matt Chipman