Note this post has been updated following the loss of photos on RMWeb

There are some beautifully engineered baseboard on RMWeb, and even if I was working in an empty room my woodworking skills are not that good.  My layout is built on existing loft ties about 1.5m off the floor as above those ties it's an empty void.  I have had additional 100x50mm struts on which the baseboard can rest but this is an old house and the tops of these timbers are not level and have also twisted a bit.  

I want to avoid having a flat layout as Hastings is my inspiration and it's hilly. Add to this a desire for rakes of 6 coaches being pulled by a 4-4-0 Schools class and I need long shallow inclines. To do this I set sea level at the middle of the north section of my layout and made the south of the layout 50mm higher than that. This gave me a gentle incline at the two edges For the centre section I could climb from 50mm to 100mm over the centre section at a 1:50 incline to give height enough to cross the lower track and also have another track going from 50mm to 0 to complete the figure of 8..

To correct the uneven levels of the existing roof supports I used a 2.4m level and a laser level to determine the heights I wanted and then fiddled with shims of ply to get everything at those heights.  In the photo below you can see I am following the plan above:

To try and deaden sound resonating from the track all the ply is laid on floor underlay already stuck to the supporting bearers - you can see a this in the bottom left corner, however this hasn't really worked but. The ply was then held in place with  a rubberized floor adhesive and a few screws driven just far enough to level up the edges of the ply with each other. 

Inclines

The steeper inclines will be the 2% offerings from Woodland Scenics, and actually the shallowest they do. Here you can see I am starting to lay them:

You can sort of see SCARM ( the software I designed the layout in) running on my tablet to check measurements.  The raised area in the foreground is sheet of 25mm expanded polystyrene which I cut to shape with a hot wire.  You can also see I am using Proses variable track gauges, Woodland Scenics Foam-Tack,  DCC Concepts 3mm foam track-bed and of course coffee!

The only problem with the ready-made inclines is that you have this sudden change in gradient which needs to be avoided by adding and removing some sort of fillet to graduate the increase / decrease in the incline:

You also want to avoid changes in incline near points and actually the SCARM software doesn't allow points to be on an incline so my design took this sort of thing into account.

You are entering a PVA and Cork free zone

Cork beds don't bend round corners and have to be cut & chamfered .

PVA is cheap but:

• It forms a hard shell that reflects sound really well and has no give.
• It is too strong especially when used to ballast so any repair work or modifications result in destruction of the track.

So I have started using Woodlands Scenics Foam-Tack not just to fix the inclines but to fix the underlay and fix to tack the track down on the underlay instead of pins.  This is great as mistakes can be undone by applying warm water and the main hold will come from the ballasting.  On that note  I'll be researching PVA free  ballasting probably starting with Deluxe Materials Ballast Bond (more on that if I ever get round to ballasting).

A look ahead

This gives an idea of where I am going finishing off the edges of the layout in ply to match the level of the terrain and use of expanded polystryene to create hills and embankments much like any other layout, to keep the weight down. You can also see I have left  a square hole so I can get into the tunnel:

Next up Laying track