Spiritual time travel with Polaroids

All that pink makes it hard to read the topography

Between bouts of working on and thinking about - mainly thinking about I must admit - the E. L. Moore book I added in the remaining levels of scenery under-structure to the Loonar Module. 

The next step is to start blending the foam into a unified shape with CelluClay. Right now it looks a little bit like an inexpertly constructed layer cake.

As I gain more experience using foam and CelluClay I can see how I can go about building the mountain on the Elizabeth Valley RR.

This little layout is a spiritual continuation of some ideas I began playing with back in the late '70s before parking model railroading for school and life.

Back then I began to get interested in modular model railroading, mountainous scenery, and casting molds for rocky terrain. I read up on making rock molds from gauze and latex, and eventually made some molds and cast a few paster rock outcroppings. I was even putting together some modules that I hoped would form the basis of an HO model railroad. 

Over there is a Polaroid - shot in my parent's backyard some summer in the late '70s - of the first two modules.

Soon thereafter we moved, I started university, and the modules were set aside. Somewhere along the way they were trashed.

When I returned to model railroading in this century I started with a layout in a mountain setting, but lost interest as I realized it was too big and didn't have space for buildings, my main modelling love. This new little 2' x 2' portable N, HO-9, OO-9, O-9 layout just hits the spot. I can have some fun making terrain with a few little buildings and cameos scattered here and there, experiment with tree and foliage modelling, and run some trains, but not have a big, overwhelming layout to finish. So far, so good.