Turkey Mountain

Builder:

Steve Blanding

Dimensions:

4' x 4 1/2'

Date Started:

May 1995

Period Modeled:

Modern

Location Modeled:

Cascade Mountains

Status:

Scenery 1/2 done

This was my second fully compliant NTRAK module.

The frame is built of 1 x 3 pine. Just about everything above the frame is built from pink extruded foam, the kind used for insulation in many modern buildings. The foam is glued to the frame with Liquid Nails (original formula) and the track is in turn glued to the foam with the same stuff. At first I was afraid that the Liquid Nails might react with the foam but a quick test showed that it works great. (Always use the original formula Liquid Nails if you can, the other formulas don't set as fast and some of them are water soluable which means that they can soften if they get damp.)

Originally I had used the foam board formula of Liquid Nails to glue the foam to the frame. The result was that one day when I tipped the frame to work on some of the rocks, the top popped right off the frame. Needless to say I was not very happy. That was the day I discovered that the standard formula would not attack the foam. Since then it's been re-glued.

This module gets its name because one of the slabs of foam that goes into the large mountain bore a slight resemblance to a roast turkey.

The long tunnel that runs through the mountain is accessed by a hole underneath the mountain. The tracks run along a shelf beside the access hole. With the interior painted black, and the hole strategically placed, it's very hard to see the access hole from the outside.

Here's a tip: when stacking slabs of extruded foam, you will almost always get a very obvious horizontal seam between the slabs. One way I've found to hide this seam is to use dry wall compound to smooth out the seam. Once it's been painted and landscaped, the seam just about disappears.

Photos: