Going back to the original design, the layout has two distinct sides and to enable each to appear independent of the other, a backdrop will be used. The plan is to use some thin plywood and mount it in place using foam blocks to hold it. After thinking about it a bit more, decided to enhance the backdrop design by adding two additional pieces to form a Y. This added stability plus helped deal with hiding the small staging area located back on the layout shelf.
At this point, the backdrop is being held in place by hot glue at the seam where the three pieces meet plus down to the base. Further stabilization will come as foam gets added when forming the hills up against the backdrop.