thanks....
I use ¾ plywood for a sub-roadbed. In the wide areas with buildings, yards, etc., it’s 15” wide atop 15x48 frame made from 3” wide pieces of 3/4 plywood. This way I was able to get the 4 pieces for the frame as well as the top out of a single precut 2’x4’ plywood panel. The panels are more expensive than a full sheet, but much easier to get home in the car. The yard area, paper mill and roof shingle plant are each made from 2 modules bolted together. The street running scene, pulpwood yard and two bridge scenes are each made from a single module. Theoretically, they can be extracted from the layout for moving and reuse.
The ‘cross-country’ tracks between modules are also cut from 3/4 plywood with the ‘ole jigsaw. The roadbed is jig-sawed from 1/2 birch plywood, also from precut 2’x4’ plywood panel. I originally used homasote roadbed but found the plywood to be more stable and be of consistent thickness. For both sub-roadbed and roadbed I splurged for the good, stable, furniture grade birch plywood. Although there is a fair amount of waste with the jigsaw method I think it was worth it, and I was able to use much of the scrap for buildings such as the roof shingle plant.
On the modules, the pink foam simply gets glued to the top. The ‘cross-country’ sections are a combo of pink foam cut and fit in between the subroadbed and screen wire attached to the foam.
