White and red are the colors of the Japanese New Year, Shōgatsu, and (for now) our layout reflects those colors in white and pink foam. Amy and I have decided to name it simply “Shōgatsu”. Anyway, this weekend we have significant real construction!
I’ve always been rather intimidated by those 8′x4′ sheets of insulation foam that the model railroad community loves, mostly because I’ve never been sure how to transport them. Well, this weekend I found out: You bring or buy (in my case buy) one of those utility razor blades and cut the thing up before you load it in the car. In our case, we sliced it into three 32″x48″ segments, and found they slid very neatly into the back of our station wagon. If we’d had a smaller car, I don’t quite know how it would have worked out. Anyway, a little trimming, and we’ve got enough foam for two, maybe three layouts!
It was only a small step from there to permanently mounting the Woodland Scenics risers and inclines to the board. To start, I laid the track on the pink foam and traced it with a fine-tip sharpie. I tried a rollerball, but it didn’t really want to mark the foam. Then, borrowing Amy’s inexhaustible supply of sewing pins (so much cheaper than Woodland Scenics’ way overprice “foam nails”), I placed the foam risers and inclines so they covered the tracings I just made. Then just a hit with the hot glue gun, and it’s permanent. Important note: Use only a low-temp hot glue gun! A high-temp gun will melt your foam before the glue can come anywhere near your work.
Despite the cost (they’re not exactly cheap), they’re really easy to work with. I will definitely be using these again in future projects. I’m going to skip the Woodland Scenics foam sheets for the next step and use foamcore instead, as it’s a ton cheaper, even if it is a lot hard to work.
Finally, just for fun, we set up a temporary platform to display a couple of buildings and the shinto shrine.
As you can see from the photos above, I don’t yet have all the track I need to complete the layout. I’ve got an order in for it, and hopefully it will be here in about a week, along with one of those great new Tomytec rural station platforms.