The Baseboard Commeth...

Well, this isn't quite what I expected to be writing about this week...

Having seemingly completed nearly all of the projects in Chris Ford's 'Modelling Narrow Gauge Railways in Small Scales' book I've been thinking to myself over the last year and a bit as to why I'm actually holding back from going the whole hog and building the layout. I've even had a sketched out plan and the 6mm MDF sheet waiting and ready to go for the longest time.

Last week though I gave myself the metaphorical kicking to get this layout started, spurred on by the fact that the big table saw at work was available for cutting the baseboard parts to size - No way was I planning on doing a 4ft long cut with the trusty tenon saw, even with this softer wood!

As with everything I've done out of the book, there is a slight twist. The original shows how to make a 4x1ft board and gives suggestions as to how to go about attaching a fiddle yard. Shrinking down the original baseboard measurements roughy by a third I found I could accommodate the scenic section and a three road fiddle yard in the same size area as the original board. The parts were assembled at a leisurely pace over the last weekend. There was a slight inaccuracy in my measurements for the cross beams, but at 2mm too long I thought that was pretty good going! Took the extra belt and braces precautions advised to make the board more suitable for exhibition use (Albeit, just waiting on picking up some screws) It isn't planned to be such a layout, but you never know.

Assembled, the full layout and fiddle yard measures 4ft x 9inches, splitting it into sections the scenic part is 74cm/29inch in length with 46cm/18inches for the fiddle. Just as a little proof of concept the other projects from the book were posed on top just to check again that I had got my clearances and track lengths right. It's only just occurred to me that I've unintentionally made a mirror image version of Chris's 'Seething' layout, sans overbridge.

In theory this shouldn't be that long of a project. The only major things to do after the baseboard are lay track, get the back-scene fitted (Very tempted to try a 'Cameo' style box for this), plonk the ready made structures in place and then ballast and add green stuff. 

And finally, just as a bit of fun, it occurred to me that the same sized baseboard could accommodate a variation of James Hilton's Seahouses inspired micro layout. I have the odd little beginnings of a GWR branch layout, and whilst it's probably too small for the much admired Collett Goods, things did look promising for the 48XX. With one engine in steam operation and a loco lift style fiddle yard it's certainly a possibility.

All things to ponder over for another time...

Replanning

I've been thinking about a potential remake for The Garden Railway for some time now, but only recently have I found the time to sit down and make a serious attempt at looking into it.

"But why rebuild it?" I can hear some readers asking.

The clearances when shunting are too tight, the head shunt is also a bit too short, the engine shed door frame is too low for a good amount of the current loco fleet, the wiring connections aren't great (Despite soldering on more pickups last year) In summary: all this results from this layout initially being built in 2020 with what was to hand, including the lack of rolling stock for clearance checks. For the last two and a half years it's probably spent more time as a glorified photo plank, and even that's difficult given the full height of the garden wall at the front. At the time though, it was a very fun sanity saving build.

It's not all doom and gloom though. The majority of the buildings can be salvaged and reused on a MK2 version, in fact the only one that is destined for the bin is the house and garden walls. Being a Scalescenes card/paper kit the printing had started to fade probably due to a lack of varnish in certain areas. The nice aspect of this is that I can have a go at bashing one of the Peco laser cut terrace house backs. I've been wanting to try one of their laser cut kits for a while, but had no context to do so!

The track plan is still going to be the same: The classic inglenook. Looking for a different way to present it I stumbled upon an article by Paul Lunn in the December 2008 edition of Railway Modeller, showing how a 3x1 inglenook could be built in a bookcase using Peco Setrack, with a more curved approach to the track plan. Trying this out in a space 6x18" resulted in the above photo. So far it seems to be looking quite nice. The main thing now is to play around with potential building sizes/placement. From there it'll be a case of looking through the off-cut pile for suitable baseboard materials.

Watch this space...