The lay of the land

True to life topography, more than anything else, defines whether scenery is realistic or not. I am going to be modeling a steam era railroad in the mountains of West Virginia and want to realistically represent the thickly wooded, rounded hilltops and valleys characteristic of the region - in a very small space. This prompted me to turn the original Atlas track plan from an "up & over" arrangement to a "down & under" configuration. Rather than having the track ascend and pass over track below on unrealistic piers and bridges, the outer edges of the layout will be at a higher elevation than the center. The planned mountain ridge at the NE corner of the layout will then be able to seem twice as high, justifying the tunnel, while a drainage basin can descend through the center of the layout from N to S, effectively dividing up the switching areas into two distinct scenes.