N
NP2626
Guest
Styrofoam, Bead Board, expanded polystyrene, is taking over the hobby as a means to support; or, produce scenic shapes of the land forms our miniature trains cross. Back when I started my current layout, Screen wire and cardboard strips where what the average modeler built his scenery base with. I chose to use cardboard strips as they where free and all I had to do was cut up cardboard boxes and make 1 inch wide strips of them. I interwove the strips, giving me a lattes work and I used hot glue; or, carpenter's glue to glue the cross strips together, holding the joints together with clothes pins while the glue dried. Where I could, I stapled the ends of the cardboard strips to my plywood sub road bed; or, plywood support structure. Over this lattes work, at first I placed paper towels dipped in plaster. Later and still now, I use plaster impregnated gauze from Woodland Scenic's; or, other. This has worked very well and I love how this was capable of producing very strong, very mountainous terrain.
Obviously I am missing the reason so many now use Foam Board. At Menards on-line today, they are quoting a price of $19.99 for pink 1 inch thick, 4' X 8' sheet. My guess is that hundreds of dollars can easily be consumed by using this process to build an average sized layout. Also, to me, it would seem that carving this material into scenic shapes would produce copious amounts of scrap, litter and dust. The people who espouse this method of building scenery, state that it is so easy to poke trees into the foam! I have to guess that this can not be the only reason foam is used, as drilling a hole in my plaster and cardboard scenery and sticking trees into them works well, also. Certainly, if money and the amount of clean-up work aren't an issue, then I can see foam board as a scenery base might be acceptable.
So, what am I missing that explains why foam has gotten so popular?
Obviously I am missing the reason so many now use Foam Board. At Menards on-line today, they are quoting a price of $19.99 for pink 1 inch thick, 4' X 8' sheet. My guess is that hundreds of dollars can easily be consumed by using this process to build an average sized layout. Also, to me, it would seem that carving this material into scenic shapes would produce copious amounts of scrap, litter and dust. The people who espouse this method of building scenery, state that it is so easy to poke trees into the foam! I have to guess that this can not be the only reason foam is used, as drilling a hole in my plaster and cardboard scenery and sticking trees into them works well, also. Certainly, if money and the amount of clean-up work aren't an issue, then I can see foam board as a scenery base might be acceptable.
So, what am I missing that explains why foam has gotten so popular?