Model Railway Forum

Hello there. This may be regarded as an odd question!

I’m rebuilding and extending my layout. In its previous version, apart from the track, ballast etc, all the scenery, buildings and so on more or less sat on top of the baseboard. I know that the tunnel though the hill needs to be made accessible in case of derailments but I am wondering how much should be stuck to the baseboard. I have retaining walls hold up an upper town scene, landscaped areas, viaduct and embankment and the hill with a tunnel though it.

The layout is permanent and not designed to be removed. Though in it previous version, having so much just sitting on the surface did make removing it and starting again much easier.

What do others do? Thank you.

It's your layout, so you can do whatever you like.

That’s a ‘how long is a piece of string’ type of question.
Buildings and structures tend to look better when blended into the landscape, so unless you need to either get inside to maintain lighting or there is a chance that you may move them later, I would stick them down.
Having said that if you do stick a card building to the board and then decide to move it, it will more than likely be damaged.

Pavement, roadway, trees, shrubs, grass & fencing are stuck down.

Buildings are just placed in position.

People are Tacky Waxed in place.

Vehicles wander about at random.

R-

My buildings are held in place with a peg/matchstick in each corner. Mark the inside corners, drill a hole, slot in the matchstick and drop the building in place.

I've seen some people use small magnets to hold structures in place. one in each corner for example.

RogerB wrote: ↑Tue Nov 19, 2019 12:16 pm Pavement, roadway, trees, shrubs, grass & fencing are stuck down.

Buildings are just placed in position.

People are Tacky Waxed in place.

Vehicles wander about at random.

R-

That's my method too.

To me this is a question on how you feel. Is many people going to look at it? If so ‘the purist’ would like it stuck down (irrespective of any challenges you may have later).

If you are happy placing items of scenery down, then go for it. As mentioned many times ‘It is your layout’.


Personally, I like my scenery I look at to be reasonably good (from the control area). Looking from any other position it’s anything but. There again others class me unconventionally.

As for tunnels etc. make sure there is easy access for track cleaning/derailments etc.

Glencairn

I place right angles of card up against the outside of buildings then use a judicious amount of gravel, greenery, foliage etc. However I like the matchstick idea - wish I'd known that before. My platform has started to come up and I thought it was stuck down permanently - a job added to my long list.

The advantage of not gluing scenic features down is that you can take them off, put on completely different features and then sometime later return all the original stuff. For example, if your layout is an urban scene, it can be transformed into a rural one with farmhouses, lots of trees and farmyard animals. And then when you have had enough of country life, return the town houses etc.

I find this freedom to change without destroying the original very liberating. You don't have to get it perfect. You can have more than one 'layout' using one baseboard.

As well as urban - rural, you can have...
Summer-winter
Contemporary (with diesel)-olde worlde (with steam)
UK-somewhere else.

Just a thought.