Baseboards
As I said in the introduction, I had to clear my Father’s house a few years ago and found a large quantity of 2 x 1 timber. Now I haven’t used 2 x 1for a layout for some years but this just looked too good to ignore, hence the new layout is constructed along somewhat old fashioned lines as basically all it cost me initially is some bendy MDF and alignment dowels. Everything else has come from either my stash or my Father’s stash of bits. I guess it is obvious where my hoarding habit comes from!
A quick check of the car confirmed that I could fit in two boards each 1.27m long by 0.67m deep and 0.49m high. I have since changed the car but fortunately the boards still fit!
Initial baseboard construction.
The basic boards are just 2 x 1 and my original plan was for some sort of forestry line, based on the Kerry Tramway but with a quarry loading area – partly to hide the sector-plate. The plan is to have a line coming up a valley within the woods from the sector-plate at the back and into a loop. The line would have carried on beyond the other end of the layout but will be overgrown. Another line kicks-back up the same valley but climbs upwards (just enough to make it look like it is going somewhere else) before dropping back to the sector plate behind the back-scene.
Initial construction of the track bed, profile boards between the baseboard joint and first section of back scene.
The track bed is from 6mm plywood supported on timber strips which are set to give the various levels. It is made a bit more complicated by my desire to have a line climbing into the loop and then another line also climbing away from the loop – but both have to access the sector plate at the same level! This makes for some interesting woodwork and I got it slightly wrong on the line climbing to the loop. I only found out after I had started laying track and I had to lift a section of track and pack it up to the correct height.
The original track layout and timber trestle supports. The angular box towards the back hides the swing of the sector plate.
As I wanted a woodland scene I was keen to maximise the height available. This meant that I had to keep the depth of the baseboards below the track bed as small as possible. This has subsequently proved something of a challenge for things like point motors and wiring – but that’s for a later page.
More of the 2 x 1 was used to make three trestles to support the boards, however I changed the way the layout is supported after seeing the way that Trevor Hughes supported his layout ‘Crowsnest Wharf’. He very kindly let me have a good look at it at Expo’NG in 2014 and I thought it was just what I needed. So now I have two cheap folding trestles and two lengths of aluminium box section. Trevor’s was 2m long and he said it went on his car’s roof bars just fine. I did a quick measure-up and decided that I could do the same but that 2.5m would be a better length for me. Fortunately this is also okay for my current car. I don’t think I will need any weather protection for just two lengths of aluminium (perhaps a towel to dry them before use?). I made two brackets from wood to sit on the trestles and locate the aluminium box sections which are just held by friction. The whole thing seems to be pretty stable and flat and it makes it easy to move the baseboards around. I still use the wooden trestles at home when I am only working on one board.
Revised layout support – metal trestle, timber spacer and two 2.5m long aluminium box sections.
I added a 9mm plywood backscene and ends but I was unhappy about the sharp corners so I added a strip of bendy MDF inside the plywood. This also allowed me to curve the backscene in front of the fiddle yard I have tried to stabilise the corners by carefully filling the void with expanding foam. I have tried to use just enough to fill the space as I have found that the foam carries on expanding long after you think you have filled the space can subsequently cause distortion.
The original track layout and timber trestle supports. The angular box towards the back hides the swing of the sector plate.
All this has meant that I have failed in my original intention to have super light-weight baseboards! They are still manageable by one person but I am going to have to be careful with the scenery or I may end up with another Dyffryn where the quarry baseboard was really too heavy (especially at an exhibition venue with a lot of stairs).
The main line track will be old fashioned timber sleepers with the more recent quarry addition in Hudson ‘Jubilee’. Initially I intended to have a couple of storage tracks in front of the passing loop and envisaged empty trains climbing up into the loop, some progressing further up the valley and some remaining to be exchanged for loaded ones that had been filled in the quarry. However, in retrospect, when I really thought about the track plan and how it would operate, I realised that this would involve the train disappearing into the backscene during shunting so I have re-arranged the track bed to make it more interesting to the viewer when shunting and running round the trains. The down side is that it makes the passenger platform area a bit short but I think I can fit everything in. Trains will now come up the valley at the back (the left-hand hole in the back scene) and enter the left-hand loop before being shunted to progress on up through the right-hand hole.
The first two strips of cork track bed are laid from the sector plate to the baseboard joint.
The line to the quarry now comes off the end of the loop and meant a bit of reworking of the track bed. This need to be re-worked again when I realised that the Hudson style track needed to be laid on Sundeala.
I still have to work a bit of the baseboard out around the quarry, including how to fill the skips without them tipping all over the place! I am working out if I can fit in a line above the quarry hopper to bring the stone in. I am thinking a battery mine loco could shuttle in a couple of skips?
I am still thinking about the quarry. Thanks go to Roy Link for a reminder of plans in an early ‘Narrow Gauge and Industrial Railway Modelling Review’ I have the basis for a collection of buildings. I just need to work out some of the fine detail to allow me to have working loading chutes at the right height.
Thoughts on the quarry loading structure following a very good suggestion from Roy Link.
There are more construction photos on the Baseboard Gallery page
Click here to move on to the Sector Plate page
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