Starting the baseboards

No photos to show (yet) but some progress nonetheless over the weekend. After a lot of deliberation and reading around since my last posts, I finally decided on a surface material for my baseboards. I have gone for 9mm plywood, supported on a nominal 2"x1" frame. The baseboard will be constructed in 4'x2' sections (or rather, 607mm x 1220mm, as that's what Wickes supply), each of which will be essentially independent with its own frame. Whether or not the layout eventually becomes portable, I feel it's better to make the board detachable in case I have to move it for any reason. The shape of my layout is neatly covered by ten rectangles the size of the ply sheets, with very little wastage.

I bought the first tranche of material on Saturday and spent a few hours on Saturday afternoon making a start on the baseboard frames. Because it's not entirely clear yet how the surface is going to work (i.e. whether it's flat or whether it's open) I am not fixing down any of the ply yet. I can still go ahead and make all the basic frames without having to worry about the surface just yet.

I have had a go at creating a track plan in XTrkCAD - it's by no means perfect and there's lots I need to learn how to do in the package. But you can see the draft here:

The draft uses Hornby sectional track for illustration but I intend eventually to use Peco flexible and Setrack if funds permit. Watch out for another post about my track dilemma soon. Some things don't quite join up - again, this is an artefact of using sectional track

I think - and I stress this is just an idea at the moment - that the main station will be slightly elevated from the base board level, and that the side sections - the areas with "vertical" track in the diagram - will have the surface at a lower elevation with the track crossing on bridges. Technically it's easy enough to do this, and there should be a nice height effect. Then the front sections will all be open frame to allow for lots of scenery and for the feeds to and from the fiddle yard (feeds to the fiddle yard are indicated with arrows on the diagram). The yard itself will, as hinted before, be under the station area.

The first task is to complete the five frames along the back wall so that I can put down some track and tweak the station layout. I have completed two and nearly finished the third of these frames, and have enough ply to cover them all. Once the station alignment is known I can finalise the plan for the complete layout and therefore the design of the open frame sections along the front.

More to come when I've tidied up enough to allow photographs! With the arrival of several plywood sheets, space has suddenly become an issue in the loft...

RIP: the portable layout

Before I started on the loft project I had constructed a small(ish) portable baseboard for my birthday trainset. Combined with track and equipment from my previous foray into model railways, this had come along quite nicely within certain limits - there was no scenery, and some of the track was less than reliable (more on that in another post). But it was never more than a stopgap, and as I am about to start on the baseboards in the loft, yesterday I called time on the portable layout. I took up all the track, dismantled the board and carried the materials up to the loft for use there.

Before the dismantling, I gave the layout one final outing with some of my existing (pre-birthday) rolling stock...















In the above picture you can see the GWR Pullman set as well as my old faithful BR HST, a class 121 DMU and some freight stock.

RIP, portable layout. No flowers.

Completing the frame

After a couple of weeks of little progress, I have lots to report again. I took a day off yesterday and was up in the loft for about 7 hours. Here is the result...















With the exception of a couple of leg braces, the primary frame is now finished! The cross-bracing will help to support the baseboards and provide extra rigidity. About half of the bracing is reclaimed wood (stuff that was already up here when I started). There was just enough of this to save me a further trip to Wickes. The total cost of the frame is a little under £70, slightly over budget but allowing savings in other areas.

I put hardboard sheets along the back wall in order to provide a foundation for whatever backdrop eventually goes behind the model. For now, it will serve as a useful noticeboard!

Having done that (bar about half an hour to tidy everything up) I can turn my attention to the baseboards themselves. Before I can start building them I need to settle various questions that I still have.

• Flat or open? Will the entire layout be built on a flat board, or will some sections be open-frame construction? At the moment I think the area along the back wall, which will contain the main station, will be flat board (possibly with the branch line platforms at a higher level along the back), but the through section at the front might include some open frame to allow interesting levels and more scope for scenery.
• Where will I put my fiddle yard? The original plan has this as phase II, on a spur at the RH side in the above picture. But this may be impractical, because there is not that much space between the front of the layout and the loft hatch, and what space there is we need to retain for storage. So I have come up with a mad idea to try and place the fiddle yard UNDER the layout along the back wall. I would need to have feeder tracks running into tunnels and thence down under the frame. I have yet to work out whether this is possible without requiring alterations to the primary frame, which might get in the way of the feeder tracks.
• What surface material will I use? I am still trying to decide whether to plump for plywood or MDF for the main running surface. Both have their pros and cons - MDF is cheaper and easier to fix track to, but ply is stronger and probably quieter. I have MDF left over from the portable layout, so I may use a mixture.

These are big issues and any advice or suggestions from out there would be welcome.

HB2Me

A big thank you to family and friends, especially Karen, for the shower of extremely useful birthday presents. I can run some serious trains now!

Behold, the frame!

Well, the basic frame is up. Apologies to the neighbours for the assorted drilling, sawing and banging that has accompanied the lovely weather at various points during the weekend.

I started, as planned, with the plank along the back wall....














Next I added two of the longitudinal beams. The location of the chimney breast meant that I had to do things in a slightly strange order.














After that, the rest of the beams went in without any trouble. Despite my less-than-meticulous measurements in places, the frame is pleasingly level!














The right-hand of the two bar stools in the above picture is in what will eventually be the operator space. I encroached into this space a bit to provide more baseboard area, but I can confirm that there is still enough room for two reasonably sized people to sit in there comfortably! I am toying with the idea of making a scenery "lid" which can be used to cover that space if the layout is running automatically (he said, breezily...).

Before the primary frame can be considered complete, I need to add two further things:

1. Legs to prop the frame in the middle (one of them is already in place, just visible in the above picture). The frame feels pretty solid but I would rather be safe than sorry.


2. Cross-bracing in each "square" of the main frame. This should help the frame stay in shape as well as providing a bit of extra support when the baseboards go down.

I have the wood for both of these things, but it may be a couple of weeks before I can resume construction because of upcoming commitments. Nevertheless I feel happy with the progress made so far.

Entering the building phase

Lots more progress to report. With a clear weekend I had plenty of time to complete the last of the preparation, buy the wood and get on with some real live construction.

First, I had to sort out the flooring. The loft had a bit of old carpet covering the walkway; when I rolled it back I found that, as well as covering the walkway, it also covered a multitude of sins...















Fortunately there was enough good chip and plywood, and some serviceable floor slats, amongst the jumble to allow me to lay a decent floor around the layout area. A permanent chip floor can wait, and it will have to: what these photos don't show is the unsightly mountain of boxes etc behind the camera! I'll need to tackle those before I can do a decent permanent job with the floor. But the result for now doesn't look too bad.




















Having done all that, I was finally ready to start making the frame. A trip to Wickes ensued, wood was purchased and loaded into/onto the car (thank heavens for the roof-rack), and brought home, hoping that my knots would hold. My trip would of course have to coincide with the biggest rain-shower of the day! I was very glad yesterday not to be living in Morpeth. Anyway, the wood quickly dried and is now all safely up in the loft.















I have bought enough large planks (47x75mm cross-section) to construct a basic primary frame, supported along the sides by the main roofing timbers, along the back by the wall, and propped in the middle by legs. It's a lot of wood! Once the primary frame is built I'll make secondary frames to carry the baseboards (this will necessitate another trip to Wickes). These secondaries will be of smaller cross-section (22x47mm) and will fix directly onto the primary frame using bolts.

As can be seen in the above photo, the first transverse beam of the primary frame has been attached to the main cross-beam in the loft. Next to go in will be the transverse beam along the back wall. After that I'll put in the four longitudinal beams; that way the two remaining transverses will have something to rest on. The main challenge is, of course, getting everything level so that the baseboards don't have any underlying gradients.

It will probably all take a long time because I can't do noisy work (masonry drilling, cutting) in the evenings - our daughter sleeps in a room just below the loft hatch, and even she would surely not sleep through such a soundscape. I'll do what I can down in the garage, but some things I can only do in situ. Ah well - there's no rush. But now that I've started in earnest, I can't wait to see the first trains running.

Progress (at last)

After a break of five months, I'm finally under way. Over the past week I have made significant progress in getting the loft ready to accept the layout. The layout space has been cleared, surrounding boxes have been moved, and, yesterday, I put in the extra lighting I will need to be able to see what I'm doing when building the framework. For lighting during the construction phase I'm just using an old fluorescent tube that used to live in our kitchen (we removed it the day after we moved in!) but eventually I will put in spotlights and other lighting to make the layout look better.















It feels good to be on the move again, even though it will be a long time before any trains actually run up there. I can't really say why it's taken so long to make progress since my first posts - except the obvious explanation, namely that the financial squeeze has kept a lid on all forms of spending. And even now, I don't know how long it will take to amass the wood for the framework. There's plenty of recyclable timber in the loft which should help with the frame, but not enough for everything I need to do.

I am planning a modular baseboard construction - a basic frame fixed into the loft, and then baseboard sections slotting into place on top, bolted together. The idea is to make the layout as portable as possible. I think I know how to do it, but I need to read a bit more first...