Making multi-level towns?

[Mr Benn]

Hi all - long-time lurker but newbie poster here!

I have been looking at some of the amazing towns that people have built on here, and I was wondering one main thing - what is the best way to make your towns 'multi-level'?

I have seen some brilliant MOC dioramas (especially for the shows) where people have built hills and things, and also elevated train lines, but for the most part people's towns seem to be quite flat. I don't have thousands and thousands of pieces to build my own slopes with - I was wondering if anyone has ideas/photos/experience of relatively simple ways to add more levels - even just an elevation of 10cm or so - and have the levels joined reasonably seamlessly together?

[LEGO Guy Bri]

Unless you are trying to use bricks as supports the easiest way to build a raised section is with 2 x 4s or 1 inch round dowels and a piece of plywood for the surface. Cut the "legs" to the height you want. Then add hinges to another piece of plywood to act as a ramp and place a road plate to cove the plywood. Try not to make the incline too steep though. As for hiding the supports, more plywood walls or dry wall. All depends on how far you want to go in detail. Paint is, of coarse, optional. This requires minimal craftsman skills, measure (twice), cutting (once ), and nailing, or drilling. I, one day hope to build a table top layout with elevation variants. I will be using wood as the medium to build. Its the cheapest, strongest way to go in my opinion (IMO). Hope this helps

[henryhotspurs]

I have a two tier stacked layout. It is approximately 8' x 16'. Multiple trains run along the long side of my layout and then under the town which is on the elevated portion. Additionally, I have a storage area, under the town, comprised of various sidings to store unused trains.

I constructed tables from 2x4s and 3/4" composite board (plywood would work). I measured the width of a 32x32 baseplate (roughly 10 inches)to get the proper table area then elevated the town portion approximately 8 inches to accomodate the height of most trains. Any roads to the area come from what appears to be a tunnel from the raised area and all trains come from a continuous loop i.e., enter a tunnel at one end then emerge from a tunnel at the other. (The Lego townspeople enter the top portion of the train station, walk down a flight of stairs, and are on the loading platform)

The only drawbacks that this setup has, is if I need to service the tracks under the town, I need to dismantle a portion of the town to access these tracks. Also my RC and powerfunctions trains Line-of-sight is blocked and cannot be controlled until they emerge from the tunnel. I made a mess when I derailed a train under there once...

The response from human visitors to my town has been positive...

[Joebot]

I have a 10-foot square table built using 2x4s and plywood. I have two raised areas in the town, also built using 2x4s and plywood. Originally, I built the raised areas entirely out of bricks, but man, does that eat up bricks FAST. Plus, it's really hard to suspend baseplates, because they're so floppy. I later rebuilt the whole raised area, only using bricks around the edges for landscaping. It's much sturdier, plus I reclaimed a ton of Lego bricks! My raised areas are 10 bricks high, which allows for a train to go underneath.

[Jvvv]

This is my goal whenever I get my inventory finished. I have maybe 100-200 litres of bulk brick (2xn), but I don't have any idea how long they can last when building supports for layers. Maybe I should start with a 10-15 brick high "basement layer", that could hide subway, parking places, basements, pipes etc.

[Legoless]

If you don't want to use plywood and would prefer the 'purist' Lego route, you could complete the foreground in normal Lego (the bits that would be on display) and maybe build up other layers (where they are not seen) using Technic beam 'stilts' or even second-hand Duplo bricks to make up the height (probably worth cleaning them first...) which would probably be quite cheap and quick compared to making up pillars using standard Lego.