Getting into the finer points of foam carving

The holidays are over, the rough building of the foam terrain is complete, and I am even well into -- shock -- the laying of the cork roadbed. In fact the whole branch line is roadbedded, thanks in part to the help of young K. and C., who have learned how to soak, cut, curve, glue and pin the cork. A valuable life skill, to be sure.

I am now stopped due to lack of materials, as we're down to one more piece of cork and the purchasing department needs to make a trip to the hobby store.

In the meantime, however, there's plenty to be done.

The laying of the roadbed has enabled the carving of ditches, which has led me into all kinds of other interesting fine landscape shaping. Yes, a lot of that has been done already, but this is much finer detail stuff.

The best way to carve ditches, so far, is to roll a small rectangle of rough grit sandpaper into a cylinder about the size of a cigarette butt. You then simply rub it along the side of the roadbed (after the glue's dry of course), making pass after pass until you're down to the depth of ditch you want. Then get a square of finer sandpaper and smooth the whole thing down.

The effect of this is wonderful. The roadbed suddenly seems like more of a part of the landscape. The landscape thus begins to "embrace" the railroad in that wonderful realistic way. Instead of a track glued down to a board, you will now have a transportation route traversing a landscape with its obstacles.