Once you’ve got a train layout set up on a flat table, you might want to make it more interesting by adding some mountains and hills. Underwater mountains are similarly limited by gravity and landslides but they can get much taller than the mountains on land can because the higher-density water supports them against gravity more than air does, McQuarrie said. Plateau mountains are similar to dome mountains, but form as colliding tectonic plates push up the land without folding or faulting.
The University of Alberta’s proximity to the Rocky and Columbia Mountains gives it hands-on access to our object of study. A natural elevation of the earth’s surface rising more or less abruptly to a summit, and attaining an altitude greater than that of a hill, usually greater than 2000 feet (610 meters).
The plates keep pushing together and the mountains keep growing, until it becomes “too hard to …