Work with hard foam Peter Marriott builds a baseboard entirely from foam.
Peter Marriott explores a lightweight alternative to the traditional wooden baseboard – Woodland Scenics’ Sub Terrain system.
In common with nearly every modeller, I have always had to use wood for baseboards. I’ve never been a confident carpenter, and I even went through a stage of commissioning baseboard builders to build boards for me. However, I have found a viable alternative.
Woodland Scenics’ Sub Terrain system is a very dense and rigid expanded polystyrene material that’s been designed for making bases for model railways and dioramas. Its primary benefit is that you don’t need woodworking skills or tools to assemble it. There’s a logical extension to the system, too. Mod-u-rail is a modular foam baseboard system that allows you to assemble layouts of any size and configuration that mounts on pre-formed wooden frames (see MR253).
I’ve used Sub Terrain for years but I’ve never actually used it as a baseboard material. While wood is difficult to master, I at least understand what tools you need to work with it and that, generally speaking, whatever you build should be fairly stable and able to support the weight of a model railway. With foam, I was less sure, so I decided to have a go.
This baseboard took only three hours to build because I used a low-temperature glue gun which certainly made the process quicker. I used 2in foam sheets, which gave a deep and solid foundation, and the risers on top not only added extra rigidity but enabled me to add differing levels of scenery. It was also fun to build and I now have a layout I can carry in one hand.
So here’s how to work with foam in order to create a lightweight baseboard.