Tips for fairly newbie starting out laying track?

Hard shell scenery is the way to go. It is basically a thin shell of plaster wiht newspaper as a carrier for the plaster, kind of like the plaster bandages that doctors use. The next thing is to not use the 4x8 plywood base for your layout but rather put the plywood only where the tracks are and use the hardshell process to fill in the rest of the layout. Personally, I use spline roadbed and hardshell sceneray on my layouts. Spline roadbed is best for larger radius curves as you need to bend the splines but it does make for a very nice roadbed when you use it. Minimum radius of about 24" or so, depending upon the type of wood and the thickness that you use for the splines.

-- Why isn't there an Ozone Hole at the NORTH Pole?

Two helpful books:

"Basic Scenery for Model Railroads" by Lou Sassi:

"HO Railroad from Start to Finish" by Jim Kelly:

These are inexpensive books. Most are 32% off list and include free shipping on orders over $25.

Good luck with your model railroad!

Bill Bill's Railroad Empire N Scale Model Railroad:

History of N Scale: Railroad Bookstore: to 1,000 sites: