Anyone have a good resource for Landscape/Mountain building?

wagnerml2

We have finished a 16'-16' room in the basement and my son and I are building a 9V train layout. The goal is to build everything 100% out of lego. We have a town section, farm section, industrial section and we would like to create a mountain with a tunnel. I have made a few attempts at modeling the mountain, based primarilry on some of the photos that some of the train LUGs have on thier websites. I have not yet been able to pin down the technique in a fashion that I find acceptable.

Has anyone had any success with this? Anyone have any links to resources that might help?

Enbric

I'd suggest, if you haven't already, to look through Flickr. Especially this group:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/legolandscape/

Landscaping is something that's hard to get right on the first try, you'll get much better with time. As a rule of thumb, avoid using BURPs and LURPs on your first try, it'll probably end up looking too repetitive.

Here are a few photos I would find particularly inspirational for a project like this...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/5237216009/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/2821213555/

Good luck.

drdavewatford

Great stuff - thanks for the tip !

wagnerml2

Thanks, Enbric!

Istokg

@drdavewatford.... the 242 "Der LEGO Motor" book of the early 1970s had some nice mountain scenes... one of which shows a cable car going up to a mountain top. However the Peeron link for enlarged images (besides thumbnails) for the 242 book appears to be broken. Here's an example from that book for some mountains on a "Space Planet".... not exactly what you'll want... but it will give you some interesting ideas that you can build a rugged mountain without the use of any specialty parts... just regular bricks...

drdavewatford

^ Shows my age - I'm sure I saw that "Space Planet" pic when I was a boy !

The generally-accepted advice is not to use BURPs or LURPs, but these can be nicely disguised by the liberal use of dark bley slopes of various gradients I reckon. The advent of the cheese slope has also been a major boon to disguising these large rock-forming elements I think.

bluemoose

Another tip for building very large scenery displays is to use Duplo or even Quadro bricks to sketch out the basic shape & fill in the interior space - makes it much less parts intensive & also a lot lighter for displays that you intend to be transportable. I've seen this used quite a few times for train layouts.

Enbric

Great tip bluemoose, and upon that same vein you should also use cheaper colors for parts that won't be seen in the finished product. Seems obvious or not worth it, but the difference in price, especially in bulk, between blue and tan can be huge. Similarly, don't fill the entire foundation with bricks when you're planning to build upwards, only use what you have to (but make sure it's sturdy, of course).

Here's an example of bluemoose's tip, except with Duplo incorporated in the landscape.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mwhuffman/95753869/

And here's what I mean when I mention not filling the foundation...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/2250557037/in/photostream