1. Yes. Even if it’s MILSed, we don’t raise them up, the tracks just kind of get encased in the landscaping.
2. You can see it ever so slightly. There’s not really anything you can do about it, and it’s not really worth worrying about anyway. I’ve tried to keep mine consistent though, at Greenberg last November all the front plates are green.
Here’s a pic Laura took at the Trolley Museum, you can barely see my baseplates on the front edge. What’s much more noticeable is the row of green brick immediately above it; since I knew no plates were gonna go in front of them, I didn’t even bother putting technique bricks in, so it looks a lot cleaner and therefore is less distracting, since it’s really not where you want people looking anyway. (If we ever do a setup where I do need technique bricks in there, they’ll be easy enough to swap in.)
Here’s one from Pete, I used all green in the back, too. I know from stuff like BrickFair that a lot of people will use whatever colors in the back are convenient for them, I just happened to have enough green.
That’s about all I can find in the time I have here, not surprisingly most pics are focused on what’s on top of the plates, not their edges, so they’re usually not in the pics at all.