# This would be so cool.



## Nikola (Jun 11, 2012)

Do you know what would be cool?

Rigorously design a layout in 3d with all grades, gulleys, ditches, and subtle changes of grade just as seen in real life. I am talking about a complete topographical layout.

Sidewalks, roadways, roadbed, building footprints, everything.

Every subtle change in grade left to right and side to side, just like in RL.

Then, take a huge foam block and have a big CNC mill have at it.

Result: an unbelievably complete, diverse and realistic starting point for your layout. 

That would be cool.


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## time warp (Apr 28, 2016)

That would be interesting, however it would require a layout roughly the size of a football stadium in HO to execute. Railroads eat a lot of real estate.


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## Nikola (Jun 11, 2012)

time warp said:


> That would be interesting, however it would require a layout roughly the size of a football stadium in HO to execute. Railroads eat a lot of real estate.


It does not have to be full scale in that sense. It could be any size from table top to whatever, and it could be sectionalized if the CNC had a size limit.

My point is that instead of starting with flat benchwork and building grades and topographical features from there - which is never easy and never quite as realistic as real life - you can start with a 3D topographical representation of the layout you want to build.

Heck, say you want a 4' x 8' HO layout. Create the topo, slice the file into 1' x 2' chunks, and almost any CNC could handle that. Glue the sections together and done - a lightweight, geologically and topographically correct layout. Now add paint because the CNC could even handle the brickwork and rock faces. Ballast and grass and so on and done.


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## Cycleops (Dec 6, 2014)

Wonderful idea but as time warp says you need a big space for that. You're forgetting that the foam itself has its limitations in the form of a non too smooth texture so it would always look like it was moulded which would detract from the realism.
Maybe one day.


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## Lemonhawk (Sep 24, 2013)

Not such a bad idea. You could break it down into modules, with the layers rough cut so there wasn't so much waste. Take it a milling house that has a 3' x 5' bed and you would have really grads milled in on the track and roads along with terrain contour. Not sure how to go form SCARM or one of the other RR designers software to a gcode file for the milling machine but its definitely doable, it might even mill in the rock contour. I don't think foam milling is really hard on the tools so price wise its also feasible. I've seen home built machines that would be capable of handling 3 x5 with maybe a 2' z axis. I think the critical point is going from the design to GCODE or to something that GCODE converters can handle. Definitely give you nice grade transitions and eliminate all the woodworking under the track.


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## Tom_C (Jan 8, 2016)

How about 3D printing? Not sure how heavy the result would be, but you could even print tunnels.


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## Nikola (Jun 11, 2012)

Cycleops said:


> Wonderful idea but as time warp says you need a big space for that. You're forgetting that the foam itself has its limitations in the form of a non too smooth texture so it would always look like it was moulded which would detract from the realism.
> Maybe one day.


Why are you guys hung up on it requiring a large space? I don't think you understand what I suggested.


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## Nikola (Jun 11, 2012)

Tom_C said:


> How about 3D printing? Not sure how heavy the result would be, but you could even print tunnels.


Expensive and slow. It's easier to whittle material away than to deposit it down.


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## Nikola (Jun 11, 2012)

Lemonhawk said:


> Not such a bad idea. You could break it down into modules, with the layers rough cut so there wasn't so much waste. Take it a milling house that has a 3' x 5' bed and you would have really grads milled in on the track and roads along with terrain contour. Not sure how to go form SCARM or one of the other RR designers software to a gcode file for the milling machine but its definitely doable, it might even mill in the rock contour. I don't think foam milling is really hard on the tools so price wise its also feasible. I've seen home built machines that would be capable of handling 3 x5 with maybe a 2' z axis. I think the critical point is going from the design to GCODE or to something that GCODE converters can handle. Definitely give you nice grade transitions and eliminate all the woodworking under the track.


Exactly!


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## time warp (Apr 28, 2016)

Nikola said:


> Why are you guys hung up on it requiring a large space? I don't think you understand what I suggested.


 Nobody is hung up, that's why we post and read. I thought it was just a conversation. Take it easy.


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## Nikola (Jun 11, 2012)

time warp said:


> Nobody is hung up, that's why we post and read. I thought it was just a conversation. Take it easy.


Hmm - at least two replies above stated that this idea requires a humungous space.

It doesn't. 

My idea is all about modeling topography realistically. If there is an idea that it simultaneously requires massive layouts, then something is amiss with the conversation.

There are very few layouts (at least that I've seen) with realistic 3D terrain. I suppose that the reason is that it is just too hard. I can appreciate that. Most layouts have most of their landscape billiard-table smooth.

Modern manufacturing methods make this solvable. Imagine the raw material is a foam block 1' x 2' by 8". You can sculpt a tremendous amount of realism with a CNC mill. All of those subtle changes in grade and elevation we see in real life - the crowned roads, off-camber turns, minute variations in track grade even with side-by-side tracks - it's all fair game.

If a CNC mill can carve an engine block it sure can carve a landscape. 

The layout would be comprised of as many foam blocks as you wish.

Agreed, we'd need better software than we have now to create the contour maps of the layout. But that is a software problem; hardly insurmountable.

The ability to do this would fundamentally change the hobby for the better by reducing the time and effort needed to do the scut work of creating one's landscape so folks could concentrate on the finishing details.


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## time warp (Apr 28, 2016)

Hmmmm. Based on the idea as represented in your first post my response was not incorrect, you clarified better in your second post and you'll notice that my lack of further posting could be interpreted as me now understanding better what you were getting at. My friend Cycleops more than likely overlapped your post with his response.
Sometimes things move slow on here, we're not sitting around hovered over the computer. This is hit and run conversation.
Be cool, everybody disagrees on here from time to time yet we remain friends, and friendly. Remember, we are all here because we play with trains. Keep it light.


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## Nikola (Jun 11, 2012)

time warp said:


> Be cool, everybody disagrees on here from time to time yet we remain friends, and friendly. Remember, we are all here because we play with trains. Keep it light.


I was never 'not cool' and am not sure why it came across like that. I expressed surprise that some had reached an incorrect conclusion regarding my idea and reiterated that it was not the case.

More important is 'how can we do this?'.


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## Tom_C (Jan 8, 2016)

Nikola said:


> Expensive and slow. It's easier to whittle material away than to deposit it down.


 Speed is relative, and so is expense. 

People at my job used a 3d printer to print out little widgets to protect little key fobs from accidentally being pressed in their pocket.

But anyway. 

If anyone wants to design a layout in 3d, then post the files. We'll see where it goes from there.


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## Robert_56 (Dec 20, 2010)

This is the 1st thing that came to mind; 




The way Nikola's post reads to me is design a layout in the scale you want then bring it to a place that does the above and there is all the ground work done! Add legs, scenery, track and some wiring to the printed foam terrain and off you go.


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## RonthePirate (Sep 9, 2015)

Reading this, it sounds to me like the topography would be to scale, yes.
And it would not have to be large.
But the scale would be so small, no real details, like bushes, trees, even people could be seen.
And if one was to put a train there, it would again be so small so as hardly to be seen.

And being that reduced in size, the detail of the train and all other objects would be lost.
That would completely offset the reason to be designing this topography.


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## CTValleyRR (Jul 26, 2014)

Nikola said:


> The ability to do this would fundamentally change the hobby for the better by reducing the time and effort needed to do the scut work of creating one's landscape so folks could concentrate on the finishing details.


Fundamentally change the hobby I don't disagree with. Personally, i think it would be a huge step in the wrong direction. Oddly enough for a model railroader, I absolutely despise track laying and wiring.

For me, one of the greatest parts of the hobby is getting in there with the foam and the carving tools and the Sculptamold and making the terrain come alive.

One of the things that makes this hobby great is that there are so many aspects to it that appeal to such a broad range of people. To eliminate one of those aspects would be a disservice. It might not be a bad thing for people who are the opposite of me and love the trackwork, design and operations but hate making scenery, but I sure wouldn't want it to become the new standard. I'm all for better ways of doing things, but not at the price of eliminating one of the most enjoyable aspects of the hobby.


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## Nikola (Jun 11, 2012)

Two interesting replies.



RonthePirate said:


> Reading this, it sounds to me like the topography would be to scale, yes.
> And it would not have to be large.
> But the scale would be so small, no real details, like bushes, trees, even people could be seen.
> And if one was to put a train there, it would again be so small so as hardly to be seen.
> ...


I don't understand why you say the train would be small. If the layout was designed for O or HO gauge, for example, that's what the end result would be.



CTValleyRR said:


> Fundamentally change the hobby I don't disagree with. Personally, i think it would be a huge step in the wrong direction. Oddly enough for a model railroader, I absolutely despise track laying and wiring.
> 
> For me, one of the greatest parts of the hobby is getting in there with the foam and the carving tools and the Sculptamold and making the terrain come alive.
> 
> One of the things that makes this hobby great is that there are so many aspects to it that appeal to such a broad range of people. To eliminate one of those aspects would be a disservice. It might not be a bad thing for people who are the opposite of me and love the trackwork, design and operations but hate making scenery, but I sure wouldn't want it to become the new standard. I'm all for better ways of doing things, but not at the price of eliminating one of the most enjoyable aspects of the hobby.


Very good point. Let me ask a question: why do most layouts, despite the effort that might be put into modeling rocks and mountains, have billiard-table smooth everything else? 

The real world is not like that. At my two-track local train station, for example, with terrain that anyone would describe as flat, one track is 6" to a foot higher than the other. The adjacent road is flat, too, but a foot or so lower, and then the roadway has a crown and a subtle grade even as the RR tracks are fairly level.

Local homes are all on grades, you can see how the level building sits with respect to the subtle grades.

I think the answer is that it is just too much work and a decision is made to focus on the significant grades and elevated terrain features and to simply accept table-top smooth everywhere else.

I have thought about this for many years and agree that with traditional approaches (and there are many) it would be a tremendous amount of work.

With software and automated production, we could model much more realistic topography. Just as DCC permits more realistic operation, my idea would permit more realistic topological scale representations for any size layout is whatever target scale.

Diversity is key and everyone's preference and use case is different. That is cool - look at how we can all love tinplate trains as much as we do the most hyper-realistic scale layout.

I for one would love to be able to model the topography of my payout just as I can the track layout using software. Then a nice CNC machine can whittle it out for me.

Still a whole lot to do to pay tracks, add ballast and grass and soil, vegetation, and the rest. Buildings could even be roughed in by the CNC - just detail and paint to mint them out.

I know we have programs like SCARM to model a 3D layout buut I am not aware of topological mapping programs. I guess the process would be to select and fine tune a topography and then to lay out your track plan. The software would be like the bulldozers that establish trackbeds in real life.

It should be a straightforward job to ETL the resulting file into something a CNC mill can digest.

It would be cool.


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## CTValleyRR (Jul 26, 2014)

You won't find a flat spot on my layout, except where humans would have gotten in there with their earth-moving tools and leveled it out.

I think you're right that many -- perhaps most -- people think that creating realistic terrain is too much work. And that's a shame, because it really doesn't take much -- a little foam, a little Sculptamold, even some plaster over balled up newspapers -- to give your terrain some relief. 

But I will grant that, just as I find it one of the greatest parts of the hobby, there are others who will be bored to tears by it. I'm all for any innovation that lets people attain greater realism without slogging through a part of the hobby they don't enjoy (I would kill for an automated track laying and wiring machine!), so long as we don't thereby eliminate aspects of the hobby that people DO enjoy.


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## Nikola (Jun 11, 2012)

CTValleyRR said:


> You won't find a flat spot on my layout, except where humans would have gotten in there with their earth-moving tools and leveled it out.
> 
> I think you're right that many -- perhaps most -- people think that creating realistic terrain is too much work. And that's a shame, because it really doesn't take much -- a little foam, a little Sculptamold, even some plaster over balled up newspapers -- to give your terrain some relief.
> 
> But I will grant that, just as I find it one of the greatest parts of the hobby, there are others who will be bored to tears by it. I'm all for any innovation that lets people attain greater realism without slogging through a part of the hobby they don't enjoy (I would kill for an automated track laying and wiring machine!), so long as we don't thereby eliminate aspects of the hobby that people DO enjoy.


Someone like you, well, you sound like the model RR elite. (That's not a dig, it is a compliment.  )

My opinion is that for many layouts there is a point below which it is just too difficult or time consuming to model realistic contour lines (as I am calling them). In other words, the small grade changes everywhere else.

And, quite frankly, it is probably more difficult to model the extremely subtle changes in grade than it is the mountains majestic.

Here's an example of a grade crossing I drove past today. The RR tracks are following a very gentle grade down (as they point away from us). The road at that point is sloping up, and the grade crossing is somehow tying it all together, including drainage via sloped ground that would make a civil engineer proud. This is a lot of what I am calling subtle, realistic contour line (or topography) in a section that is probably less than a square foot of HO layout.









If one were modeling the above using traditional methods, where is the 'billiard table' flat frame of reference? It is either the lowest elevation in that scene (more properly, the lowest elevation in the entire layout) OR you have to dig holes in your layout table to permit elevations lower than your baseline.

I give you or anyone else who models this level of terrain realism onto their layouts using the tried and true techniques major props. Seriously. I know enough about it to understand that it is a lot of work, maybe not in the difficulty of the tasks so much as the difficulty of planning and executing it over an entire layout. And the bigger the layout the bigger the task (I believe the effort goes up as the square - 4 times bigger layout is 16 times the effort).

What I am suggesting is not a development exercise as it is a systems integration issue. We need to marry topologic / contour line software with a layout tool such as SCARM and convert the file into a form a CNC can digest. At that point we are blocks of foam away from being able to create the 'bones' of a truly realistic layout.


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## DonR (Oct 18, 2012)

Nikola

As you have said, except for some more arid areas of
the great Southwest, and some very flat plains in the
Midwest, the terrain of North America is a palette of
vertical changes, hills, valleys, rivers, drainage ditches,
and the like. The great layouts of our hobby will have
a lot of ups and downs and that is what makes those
stand above the others.

Your picture of a highway side crossing with various
change in plane would be a very interesting detail
on a model. I can see it coming to life with the use
of foam of various thickness. That would be a very
nice detail, and an interesting challenge.

Don


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## CTValleyRR (Jul 26, 2014)

Elite, maybe (thanks for the compliment, anyway!), but hopefully not elitist. I don't insist that anyone else do it my way.

My secret is Sculptamold. Basically, the extruded foam "tabletop" doesn't touch anything except the roadbed. Everything else gets at least a thin layer of Sculptamold, which makes it almost impossible to get anything perfectly flat, and very easy to build gentle undulations. If you need more relief, just glue down a couple of chunks of scrap foam before putting the Sculptamold on. If you have a particular terrain profile you want to achieve, extruded foam in a "wedding cake" configuration, then carved into the shape you want with a steak knife and a rasp (which makes a mess, but that's easily fixed with a shop vac), then covered with Sculptamold.

You can easily make anything from a town to a mountainside in a short afternoon's work by doing this. Again, not to preach, but to hopefully illustrate how simple it can be. Obviously, if you're trying to meticulously recreate the terrain contours of a real place, you have to be a little more careful, but still.


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## Nikola (Jun 11, 2012)

CTValleyRR said:


> Elite, maybe (thanks for the compliment, anyway!), but hopefully not elitist. I don't insist that anyone else do it my way.
> 
> My secret is Sculptamold. Basically, the extruded foam "tabletop" doesn't touch anything except the roadbed. Everything else gets at least a thin layer of Sculptamold, which makes it almost impossible to get anything perfectly flat, and very easy to build gentle undulations. If you need more relief, just glue down a couple of chunks of scrap foam before putting the Sculptamold on. If you have a particular terrain profile you want to achieve, extruded foam in a "wedding cake" configuration, then carved into the shape you want with a steak knife and a rasp (which makes a mess, but that's easily fixed with a shop vac), then covered with Sculptamold.
> 
> You can easily make anything from a town to a mountainside in a short afternoon's work by doing this. Again, not to preach, but to hopefully illustrate how simple it can be. Obviously, if you're trying to meticulously recreate the terrain contours of a real place, you have to be a little more careful, but still.


Elite - yeah, probably. 

Even the method you describe has two idiosyncrasies:

- the need to sculpt every square inch of your layout by hand

- the roadbed is still referenced on a billiard-table flat zero elevation frame of reference.

In real life, the roadbed and everything else rises and falls. Not much, but it is not flat. 

Note the roadbed in the photo I posted a couple back. The roadbed is sloping down - anyone modeling this scene would undoubtedly keep the roadbed flat.

Also, adding topology as you describe is really adding height against the zero baseline of the billiard table. Unless I misunderstood, you are not laying roadbed or roads below that 0 elevation (maybe you do gouge ditches and so on, but I would wager this is minimal and that you are not bulldozing the tabletop to let long runs of roads and roadbed sit lower).

Don't get me wrong, I am not criticizing your efforts, results or the current state of the art in terms of layout construction techniques. I am proposing an approach that would fundamentally advance our ability to create even more realistic layouts.


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## CTValleyRR (Jul 26, 2014)

As with everything in this hobby, compromises must be made. The roadbed itself IS perfectly flat, because my interest in modeling scenery doesn't trump my desire to have my model trains run well, and introducing small variations in height is a good way to screw that up. I make that concession to "level" in the interest of trouble free operation, not due to laziness or lack of ability. Would any hobbyist REALLY want to have to deal with the potential pitfalls of modeling those minor changes in elevation? But if you did, it really wouldn't be that hard, either by gouging into the foam or using shallow inclines like the ones made by Woodland Scenics. Also, the illusion of the terrain's undulation can be achieved by varying the height of the surrounding terrain above and below the roadbed.

You're wrong though, that my track is at the lowest level. I have a double layer of foam, so that the track can be 2" above the "base" height. Since I'm modeling the lower Connecticut River Valley, there isn't a need for more relief than that, but that's a matter of design choices, not the physucal capability of doing so. I have seen people model hundred foot deep canyons. 

You refer to a "need" to sculpt every bit of my terrain by hand. I call it a desire. Your idea appears to stem from the fact that you find creating terrain tedious, hence your desire to automate the process. For me, such a process would make the hobby far less enjoyable.

And how many of us are really trying to exactly duplicate a real area as opposed to "suggesting" it. Selective compression and sheer scale limit the utility, and even desireability of exactly duplicating a real place.


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