Rollercoaster

It had been my intention to build this layout on a flat base - a hollowcore door, or a thick closed cell insulation foam slab. Not being very good at planning layouts to the N-th degree before starting, I prefer to build and plan iteratively as I go. Having a flat, stiff baseboard helps me ‘see’ the size of the project and position things on it so they work for me visually.

This is not the way things have worked out here...

Firstly, my foamboard 'gradient trial' has developed a life of its own, to grow like a proverbial spaghetti monster extending its black noodly appendages across all three levels of Wassen. 

Coney Island Cyclone

It turns out that not only is the 5mm foamboard easy to cut and glue together, everything is coming together so fast that building in it has become addictive. While constantly referring to the big-picture objective in my mind, I’m able to plan one or two steps ahead, prototype it to see if it fits, and tweak things as I go which has helped me ‘see’ how things will work and what needs to be moved to make the scenes look right.

A second contribution to this way of thinking came from the Head Druff, who let slip a throwaway line while reviewing early progress on a site visit a few days back - "why not build a few angle girders from foamboard and start there”. That sounded far too professional to me, but did spark a thought given that a Knaufboard foam slab the size of a door costs $130 at Bunnings.

So I’m experimenting with using strips of 5mm foamboard to tie all my makeshift grades and temporary support legs together, and bolstering them with braces and some ‘girdering’ components on the bottom. Much of the work has been done with quite thin 2.5cm strips of 5mm foamboard. Additional stiffness in some areas will be provided by a sheet of the stuff under the hidden ‘yard’ at the back of the lowest level of the layout. 

Compared to the traditional approach of building up from a flat, rigid baseboard, effectively this is similar to the way automotive design evolved from having a stiff ladder frame with a body stuck on top, to using only a monocoque body that in itself provides all the strength needed.  

It seems to be working, hopefully when the glue has set it will prove strong enough, and as mentioned before, its a really fast way to build a layout. If things are still a little flexy, I’ll follow the Druff’s suggestion and throw some stiffer girders underneath or encase the outside in wood.