Making Mountains out of Newspapers

The risers are in place, and now we can move on to the fun stuff. Creating mountains! The first step was applying profile boards along the edges of the layout. To cut these, I bought a Woodland Scenics Foam cutter. This uses a wire to quickly cut through foam, and since the foam included in the kit is made to work with the cutter, no harmful fumes are released while you are cutting. The only other tool that I had to buy that wasn't included in the kit was a low temp glue gun and glue sticks.

You can see the profile boards in place here, after placing flat foam areas wehre houses will go and the sides of the tunnels, it's just a matter of building up the contours. A liberal supply of masking tape keeps all of the newpaper balls in place.


This angle shows just how these balls of newspapers are used to create the undulating mountain texture. To create the 4'x8' layout required about 10 Sunday newspapers.