Landscaping the Foam

After cutting the foam on the north side to fit the trestle, I used Woodland Scenics Scenic Glue to hold the 4 layers in each set together. I weighed each down with a full bottle of glue and let them set until the next day.

I put the trestle in place, laid the track in place, and traced around the track with a pencil. Then I drew contours for the rock faces with a pencil on the north pieces. I used the lines as guides to cut away the foam with the hot-wire foam cutter.

Each stack of half-square triangles was then glued together and set aside to dry.

To make the other pieces of foam fit a little less snuggly, I cut an additional eighth of an inch off of each end. In addition, because each corner of the suitcase has an L-shaped piece of metal (to hold a metal rod to which the lining had been attached) that extends a little way into the inside, I cut the outside corners off each east and west layer and notched the upper lay to fit. Then I glued the layers of each east, west, and south foam unit together.

After the glue was dry, I drew contours along the top of each section and corner with a pencil and used my
hot-wire foam cutter to carve contours into the mountains. The top edges were rounded with a Revlon emery board.