Over the last week I’ve been cutting and carving polystyrene blocks to create hills. It’s great fun!

The polystyrene blocks are old packing materials that I saved. Our bread knife, with it’s serrated blade, was great for cutting the blocks into a rough shape. Then I used a sharp vegetable knife, with a plain blade, for smaller cuts to get the shape right. Use your kitchen knives but don’t do this in your kitchen – small pieces of polystyrene go everywhere.

I found it easier to build the hills from small pieces of polystyrene. There are about 20 pieces on the layout, all held in place with Gorilla Glue. After the glue had set I did some final shaping with a small surform shaper. I’m chuffed with the results.

Here’s the station side of the layout.

This side will become fields of sheep.

The next step will be to coat the polystyrene with filler to create a smooth surface. Now, that should be very messy…