Finally got all of the plastering done. (Thanks Danielle!) Unfortunately we didn't quite have enough to finish the lift out mountain piece - less than one square foot remains uncovered. I was a little disappointed with running out of plaster cloth with such a small area left to cover. I intend to simply cover it with plaster putty and see how that works out.As you can see I have already started to lay some track. We did this while the table was out away from the wall and the back of the table was more accessible. Very difficult to lean over the table with how wide it is. Putting the table back into place was much easier than moving it away from the wall.
Although it was a little bit inconvenient I am glad that I put down the turntable before plastering that section because the Atlas turntable that I purchased accept 1/4 inch roadbed leading up to it. The cork-bed I am using is only 3/16 of an inch and so the plaster conveniently makes up the missing 1/16 of an inch.
I did have some debate as to whether or not use cork for roadbed as opposed to vinyl or foam rubber. I settled on cork because it was a known quantity -- the rail layouts I've made before I've used cork, and many people report that cork is just easier to work with than the other two popular choices. The deciding factor for me though was looking in the hobby store at Woodland Scenic's foam rubber roadbed product -- it just didn't look very prototypical in my opinion, at least not like the cork looks.
As far as attaching the cork to the table/plaster, I was thinking that a highly adhesive glue would be required, like PL Premium, but a lot of people recommended simple white or yellow carpenters glue. Although I had my doubts, I had to correct a section of cork that I laid with the white glue, and a somewhat significant portion of plaster came out with the cork which I ruined and ended up having to lay completely new cork.
