A Southern New Jersey Mountain

I've been known to drive some modelers crazy with my anachronisms (planned & unplanned) but this falls under the oxymoron category. Southern New Jersey just doesn't have anything that could even be stretched to be called a mountain. Boy, do I miss my old fictional PRR Schuylkill Division (http://myrrlayout.com/R/Aspfiles/DetailPage.asp?Xfer_Code=20001280&Scale=N) Since that was located along a waterway with either small mountains or very tall hills on the sides, it was easy to create an excuse for the tracks to curve. Which also made it easy to hide staging tracks.

When I decided my new layout would cover the towns I grew up in (1950s), I lost that ability. Southern New Jersey is represented by flat land, sand, scrub pines and primarily maple  (and oak) trees. So now I have a problem. The shelf layout will go around the room and I have a strong conviction that tracks parallel to the edge of the layout are toy like (and boring). So I have to introduce some modifications to make the tracks change direction and stay off the walls. The track variations are not exactly true to the prototype here, but I only need me to bend the "truth" a wee bit for interest. And since I can't do a 20' run on an 18" shelf and not have it look like it is parallel to the edges, it must happen! So how do we justify the bends - with a southern New Jersey mountain of course! (Actually something that wouldn't even qualify for  a hill designation.)

I recently finished the Brooklawn trestle (a curved trestle where a straight one had been) and needed to fill in the ground under it (yes, it would have been smarter to do the trestle before the terrain but I am an impatient sort).

I mixed a batch of earth colored sculptamold and finished the trestle area. With the remaining half batch I added some terrain bumps that give the tracks a reason to jog (just a bit). Covered them with grass and course turf. They need something like a few trees or a billboard but that would raise a second issue. This is to be an operational switching layout and the sidings on the far side make these areas prone to some foreground elbow damage. Oh well, that a problem to be solved when the layout is a bit more mature. (Why didn't my parents just live in Pennsylvania?)

I also got the "lots" paved for the Westville power plant and the Brooklawn Murphy's Park N Eat, Merit gas station, and Todd's auto repair. Now I just need to make the signage for them.