Laying Out the Track Plan

The next step in the process was to layout the track plan on the foam board. The easiest way to do this was to lay out and connect all the track, power connections, turnouts, bridges and viaducts.

Once everything was connected and properly aligned, I ran the trains around the layout to make sure all the clearances were correct. Then I marked the location of all the roadbed with a pencil.

Since my foam board was sealed with a layer of thin cardboard, and I was planning on creating several depressions in my landscape, I had to peal off the cardboard everywhere there was no track and roadbed. I was planning on laying down an additional cork roadbed on my main outer line so it would be higher than the inner lines, so the cardboard helped keep the inner lines just above the surface of the foam.

Finally, I drilled the holes for the wires to the power blocks and the turnouts. I was now ready to start digging out the depressions for the river and the highway ...