Best way to construct a small urban "hill"?

[railsquid]

I've been pondering on how best to fill up that pesky empty area in the centre of my layout which has not yet been smothered by track. There's not a huge amount of space, and the basic plan is "fill it with buildings" to create that dense urban look so common in Japan. But just buildings on an entirely flat board is kind of boring, and while flicking through the Tomytech catalogue I spied this onsen diorama and inspiration struck - a small "hill" opposite the station with some onsen hotels on it. Not really a true hill, more a raised section of ground which has been "faced off" with concrete embankments of the kind common in Japan.

 

What would be the best way to go about constructing this? I'm thinking of carving some polystyrene blocks into the desired shape; how to make the surface? Plaster cloth? Papier mache?  The area will be something like 25cm x 20cm.

 

The concrete embankment walls are easy to obtain as parts.

[kvp]

I found that normal polystyrene is too soft and not durable enough. Construction grade foam boards that can hold the weight of an adult without crushing is much better (they are usually pink and blue in Europe). If one layer is not enough, you can glue several layers together and then carve them as one block. You can carve them easily with a box cutter and glue them with normal synthetic white wood glue. Then you can add paper or sand on top, paint it and add static grass or any vegetation. Using paper grass and road surface mats on top is the alternative (easier, less messy and faster) way. Ideally the whole block will be light and liftable (don't glue it down) and very sturdy, so you can't damage it easily while handling. This is also a good strategy for easily servicable tunnels. (it's also good that you can fully paint the inside of the tunnel walls, so people looking in or a camera train will see a solid mountain)

[railsquid]

Thanks. My local DIY centre has some blocks of various sizes which look promising.

 

I won't be glueing/fixing anything down for a while yet, need to experiment with various ideas and convince myself the track layout works. In fact, I suspect there'll be a Version 2 next year with 60% more space, so I'll concentrate on easily moveable items for now.

[Claude_Dreyfus]

I found that normal polystyrene is too soft and not durable enough. Construction grade foam boards that can hold the weight of an adult without crushing is much better (they are usually pink and blue in Europe).

 

I used the 'pink' foam for Kanjiyama. It is very effective...

[cteno4]

Squid,

 

The polystyrene construction insulation board is great stuff to do this with. Like KVP mentioned its dense enough to be tough, but still light and easy to form. A 100yen store steak knife is great to cut the foam with as the serrated edge is great for carving away odd shapes. Matte knife works well for straight cuts, but won't go past an inch thick. Sanding also works well, using very rough grit like 40 to rough in shapes and 100 for smoothing. A really rough rasp also works nicely. Beware though statically charged bits will get everywhere so best not do it where SWMBO would mind. Vacuum cleaner gets it up well if used frequently but it does tend to get everywhere!

 

You can also hot wire cut the stuff. This is reall great but requires building or buying a hot knife or wire setup. While the slickest route to do foam carving, unless you plan to do a lot it's probably not worth it. Also have to be well ventilated for the fumes.

 

You might think of doing a lot of your scenery pieces in smaller chunks so you can move things around easily as the layout evolves. Amazing what can be done with little scenery bits to rally make a scene. We did this with the new york jnr east show layout and it really was fast and flexible. Check out Barry's article on his movable feast as well.

 

http://japanrailmodelers.org/pages/modelingjapan/tempoary.html

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[railsquid]

Jeff, many thanks for the info, much appreciated. This internet is truly a wondrous thing; if it had been around 25 years ago maybe I wouldn't have given up so easily. Anyway making up for it now.

 

As far as SWMBO goes, this is my own office/squid cave and I have merely orders not to extend the railway outside of it. She does approve of my construction plans and insists on a rotenburo (open-air hot spring pool).

 

Like I mentioned above, I'm not planning on fixing anything down just yet as I'm sure the general design will evolve. I'm off to Europe for a couple of weeks soon so will no doubt return with fresh ideas. My mid-term plan is to add a couple more baseboards to make it L-shaped, and hopefully get away from the current roundy-oval trainset design.

[cteno4]

Forgot to mention that at times you can find bits of leftover styrene foam insulation at construction sites that they are happy to get rid of, sometimes just sitting in the dumpster. I've found construction folks very nice if you ask nicely and they have even said come back next week and they have a little pile of scrap whatever put aside for you. When I was a kid I use to build wooden toys to sell and scrap 2x4 was perfect and construction guys were happy to see the scrap going to a good use. I've picked up insulation foam scraps a couple of times from house construction sites. Also might see if there is a walk in freezer installer near by as they use gobs of the stuff as well and may have scrap.

 

Here in the states the sheets are usually 2'x4' or 4'x8' so you have to buy a pretty good chunk at a time. Ironically recently I've heard a few of our big box stores carrying the 1" foam in 2'x4' hunks (they just whack up bigger sheets like they do with ply wood and resell), perhaps enough model train guys kept asking if there wee smaller pieces!

 

Jeff