[astack]

I’ve got about 2’ of topography to deal with in my layout. What I had planned originally was to deal with a few inches of that by smoothing the grade out over a longer length than the elevation changes. So e.g., if the track needed to drop 4” over a 10’ section, engineer it to drop over 16’ of track instead of 10’ to keep the grade 2% or less. That approach might help you here.

The problem with my attempts at that was that the uphill sections have track laying on ballast on the ground or in a roadcut (lower sections are raised on a trestle), and my surveying/grading skills are of limited precision and the ballast tends to move around here and there with weather, kids, etc., so some sections end up steeper than I want. Depending in your layout design and how much engineering you want to do, you may also run into issues with unevenness and relaxation later on as well. My approach, after having raising the trestle by 2” to reduce the grade I need to deal with on the uphill sections, has been to build more tolerance into my plans to account for the roadbed evolving over time.