I'm using foam as a scenery base on mine, with mainly cookie cutter plywood with a 3/4" foam sandwich for subroadbed.
Building a mountainous terrain, there is virtually no waste with foam. Cut out a depression, take the resulting scrap and turn it over, as Mike says, it becomes a hill.
I built this hill by stacking crescents of foam all sliced from a 2" x 6" x 18" panel. It's hollow in the back. All tolled, I think I bought two 2" x 2' x 8' panels for about $10 a piece, and maybe three bags of Sculptamold. This built everything that's on the layout now, plus the Chaffee Branch section that's still out in the garage. I'm going to end up abandoning that, but I can easily cut up the foam and re-use it on the planned expansion east of the yard. Try re-using plaster/cardboard after you tear up an old layout... Not possible.
And yes, planting trees is a snap. I take a small screwdriver, poke a hole through the Sculptamold skin, and POW. Trees. This was very handy as I was doing my photo shoots for the magazine articles, as I could pull trees and move them around easily to get the various angles I wanted and still have full looking scenery. I wanted the steam image below to have the appearance of a recently built line with cleared embankments,
And the same spot several decades later... Move a few trees around to do the trick.
I guess this makes me a Foamer!
Lee
