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Elevation isn't that hard once you have found a way to do it. The way i do it is
1. Create the track flat without any building or barriers, just the track itself and its surrounding land, then split it into the sections you want elevated. Remember that you need to split the track at where you want the elevation to end.
2. Extrude the track and surrounding land to the height you want.
3. On one side of the track, draw a diagonal line from the elevated track to the ground.
4. Find the mid-point of the diagonal line (the cursor should turn light blue if you've found it) and draw an arc from the mid point to the elevated track. Draw another arc from the mid-point to the ground.
5. Delete the straight, diagonal line.
6. Use the follow tool and drag the curves over to the other side of the track.
7. Use the follow tool again and drag the curves to where the barriers would be. Sometimes you will get a lot of lines going over the grass. Hold Shift and use the eraser to hide them. (I've kept them on one side to show you what i mean.)
8. To create the barriers, I draw a line around the track and then create a 1x1.5m box and then use the follow tool to drag it around the track.
9. To create the hills outside the track, draw a line from where the barrier to the edge of the surrounding land. Then draw a diagonal line up to the elevation. You can do the same trick with arcs and have smooth hills but i normally don't to save time.
10. Hold Shift and select the lines you have just created as well as the connecting line to the barrier and the bottom line of the barrier.
11. Then go to Draw>Sandbox>By Contours. Sometimes you will get a layering issue and lines outside those selected will appear. To delete them right click the sandbox and the edit group and delete the lines.
12. Paint the track and surroundings.
And voila!!! You've made elevation in Sketchup. I've included screenshots of an elevation i'd done during writing this tutorial to help you. Remember if anything goes wrong, the undo tool is your friend. Curved elevations are a lot harder to do and aren't as methodical as straight line elevations. They seem to be more about trying to get it to look right without having any positive or negative camber to the road. I still haven't got them properly smooth yet and the barriers are a pain to implement after. If you have any problems that aren't in the tutorial, PM me
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