"Railway Lines on the Table" Topic

I now have a couple of respectable opposing forces for WW2 in Europe. However, so far, none of their battles have included railway lines and this cannot go on. I therefore wondered how people model such features on their tables. Mine is made up of terrain tiles with roads and water features imbedded. However, my initial thoughts are that railways tend to be above the surface of the land other when they are going through cuttings etc.

Therefore, am I better modelling the rails separately (up a bit on ballast etc) and just laying them down as extra terrain features like buildings? Or should I create a series of new terrain tiles in the same way as for roads and rivers etc? What do people advise?

How often do you plan to use them? Will they be an influential terrain piece, e.g an embankment or a cutting or a bridge. How you intend to use them will influence your design.

I don't use tiles, but have railway track on raised beds to just lie down across the table. It provides a nice low view block and defensive cover too. For use with 28mm, I picked up S scale track which looks better than O scale where the spacing between the rails is wider than the people are tall.

The raised embankment also allows it to line up better with a railway bridge.

Eventually I would like to do cobblestone roads with rails embedded. I'll use HO for that as the interurbans that went all over the Netherlands were 1m gauge.

We use railway lines a lot.
They make a good visual alternative piece of scenery to roads too.
in 15mm I usually make 12'and 6" strips narrow 3mm thickness plastic card . Glue TT rail track on top.

We use them in Fighting for Mexico, Civil War battles, PBI, Sudan ,AK47 et al

link to show the pieces in situ

martin

Once i get my trains painted uo I'll add rail lines.

For 15mm – -I tend to use N-Scale track on a roadbed and then on the table like a road or fence

We have used them in battles in Western Europe (France 1940) and in North Africa (Torch Landings and follow on battles).