I am restoring my father's layout from early 1970's. I wish to keep it has he had it. Because of room limita I had to place mountain/tunnel in corner. i have track running well now and wish to begin scener soon. But how to make it with removable top for derailments and track cleaning. Thank you
Welcome to the forums.
If I understand you correctly the layout is all made up and you are trying to make an existing moountain removable for access.
What is the mountain made of, plaster over screen, cardboard webbing, paper towels or is it foam? Will help folks to know what materials you are working with.
Would it be possible to cut off the corner of the benchwork behind the mountain to access from the rear?
If you are going to have to make the mountain, I would suggest extrded foam. It's lightweight, quite strong and easily shaped.
Good luck,
Richard
My mountains, which hide staging, (wip) are plaster cloth over wadded up newspaper, built on ply wood frames. Once dry, the newspaper was removed. One mountain proved too long for easy handling when cleaning track, so I simply cut it in half with a regular hand saw, and will hide the joint with scenery. Hope that helps some. Dan
I don't know how it would work with your tunnel but when I built mine, I had a big horizontal opening away from the main viewing angle, where I could stick my hand in and retrieve any derailed locos.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
Twin -- Welcome to the forum.
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York1 John
Traditional methods have their place, but I don't think there were consistently good liftouts before extruded styrofoam (the pink or blue stuff) came on the scene. It's cheap, light, and sturdy. I tend to use it for all my scenery, but you can use a piece that's just the right size to fill the hole where you need it to go.
This is one of my larger liftouts (~6' long) resting in place.
Here it has been lifted out and set on the track in front.
I use a layer of Sculptamold over the pink board, which helps keep the weight down.
This one illustrates how the liftout can sit on some framing to hold it in place.
The funny looking tunnel with three track in is trackage for a mine complex. Here you can see the mountain gone.
Something worth noting in the prior pic is that most of the vertical roacks are RubberRocks. These are molded in a thin section, then you build s liftout to use them with. This is especially helpful when you have hidden trackage near to track that will be out in the open. Here's another large liftout that uses them extensively.
It fit in here.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
I built a mountain over my helix. I knew I would need to stand inside the helix at times, so I built a scaffolding of 1X2 supporting two parallel rails. The top of the helix mountain sat on the two rails. When I wanted acces, I simply slid the mountain rearwards along the rails, being carefull not to shove it so far that it began to tip.
This view during construction shows one rail, which was merely a cut length of L-girder that I wasn't going to use otherwise:
Mike, those are some impressive liftouts!
My plan calls for a mountain. It's on a exposed end so no liftout required, but I'm going to deliberately build the top as a removeable N-scale layout...
Visit the Chicago Valley Railroad for Chicago Trainspotting and Budget Model Railroading.
Some good replies here, and well-illustrated with photos, too.
I have one track in a tunnel on my layout, which starts here...
...and emerges, at a somewhat lower level, here...
The mountain over it is definitely not removeable, but the track is accessible from below...
I used some Masonite, left-over from the fascia installation, to prevent derailed cars from falling to the floor, but have never had a derailment in the tunnel.
Twin Building mountain with removable top
Building mountain with removable top
When I first saw the title of your thread, my instinct was to reply that a mountain wiith a removeable top is usually known as a volcano.
Wayne