Profiles in Mountain Building

Roughed in styrofoam profile of the mountain.

Once the tunnels were finished I decided I needed an outline of the mountain's profile to give me some idea about how tall it could be, its overall shape, the space it would consume, and the views it would create from different vantage points. I didn't want to jump into mountain building without some guide - you don't want to enter the high country without a guide :-)

Temporary foamboard wall for working out the mountain's profile.

To begin I taped together some foamboard sheets and placed them in roughly the centre of the two lobes that will be home to the mountain. I then placed the trolley on the track in front of this temporary foamboard wall for scale. 

From this point I spent two days looking at the thing from various angles and heights, marking profiles on the boards until I got a profile I thought I could work with. I then cut out the profile.

Foamboards cut to initial profile.

I learned a lot working on the thing. One was the realization that if I stuck closely to photos of terrain near Inspiration Point and the Circular Bridge, the resulting layout would look a little ho-hum to me. I wanted the mountains to look a bit fearsome and daunting. I wanted them to look like you couldn't just take a brief stroll up to those features from the parking lot. No, it had to look like getting to those places was best by trolley, and even then, it would be something of a scary ride. So, I sacrificed fidelity to prototype for drama. 

Somewhere along the Mt. Lowe trail in Jan 2020.

Well, maybe it was more of a trade-off than a sacrifice. I've felt plenty of drama on portions of the Mt. Lowe trail, and I can imagine that back in the days when tourists could take the trolley over the Circular Bridge, and stop there to observe the view, it could be dramatic and heart-stopping. So, maybe the feeling is right even though the details aren't. We'll see.

Somewhere in Zion National Park, Aug 1991. Scan from a Kodachrome slide.

I must admit I'm not completely satisfied with the profile. As I studied it more it seemed to look like views I saw years ago in Utah's Zion National Park. They are indeed dramatic, but not in the Mt. Lowe sense.

Ok, well, I'm jumping ahead a bit, we'll get back to apprehensions in a minute. I used the foamboard wall to trace the profile onto pieces of 3/4" thick styrofoam sheets, cut them out, and then glued them on the layout.

Initial profile in styrofoam before moving centre section back a bit.

Once installed I looked it over from various angles and determined the centre piece was too vertical and too close to the track so I cut it out and moved it back a bit. That is probably the first of many adjustments and modifications on the trail to 'perfect' mountains. I'm now in a mode of leisurely looking at the thing, making modifications, and filling out the shape in all directions. No doubt lots of coffee will be consumed in the process.

One last thing before I go for the first of many cups. There's one constraint on mountain size I forgot to mention: although the mountains need to appear tall and intimidating, they also need to fulfill the prosaic requirement of being able to fit through the workshop door so I can get the layout out of the shop and into the family room, or the trunk of the car! It's a portable layout after all :-) Trust me, it fits, but just.