Well I woke up this morning feeling a bit under the weather, I have been feeling a bit rough recently and have put it down to my friend and yours - Man Flu. I call it man flu but really its just a head cold and a sore throat. Despite my illness I decided that for once I was going to pull rank as the boss and take the day off to work on the layout, namely finish the baseboard.
With milder weather arriving over the weekend I was able get about 7 hours of building time in the garage. I also had a couple of trips to B&Q for timber, ply, screws and bolts. For reference I used the following ingredients:
That’s all the ingredients I used, I couldn’t tell you how much of each I used as I lost track. The most expensive part is the timber, it came in at about £9 per pack and I used a lot as I was also using it to make the legs, which I did by screwining 2 lengths together into a kind of L shape. The first image below explains this better.
Having spent a few hours in the garage over the weekend building the baseboard for the new layout, I have actually put pen to paper today and started to plan what I was going to put on the baseboards. Being a very new modeller and eager to see some trains running past, while I sit back and sup my cup of tea, I am going to try and squeeze a two road roundy roundy onto my L shaped boards. Space isn’t too much of a problem so I can expand my plan in any direction really, I just don’t want to try and build a mega 14ft x 10ft monster that I will NEVER finish.
This weekend has finally presented me with the opportunity to get some work done on my proposed main layout. We have a large double garage that houses just one car. The other half has been given over to Junk storage and my model railway.
Despite having rather a lot of space in which to house my layout I am struggling to decide what size this layout is going to be. Whatever it is, it needs at least one ’roundy roundy loop’ so that I and my 4 year old can watch stuff trundle by - plus I like the clickity clack the wagons and coaches make.
Baseboard Framework
Having already erected an 8 foot 3 by 2 foot board along the back wall I added one more 8 by 2 foot board to make it an ‘L’ shape. I also constructed the next 8 by 2 foot board but ran out of time to baton it to wall and attach it to the rest of the frame work.
I am sat here thinking I should post some progress on my steel yard, however I have nothing to report. Sub zero temperatures have rendered the garage absolutely bloody freezing. I did venture out there over the weekend to sort out some bits to enable me to try some kit building, and nearly froze.
I do have a winter plan, that is to build some kits - I think I have about 15 to build of various wagons, coaches and 2 class 400 EMU’s - I have everything I need for the wagons, paints, glue etc etc. I just need to find the motivation to do it.
Finally we have moved into the new house and I have moved enough of the boxes from the garage to start playing trains again. I plan to have a larger permanent layout in addition to the steel terminal, so my first job was to build part of the new frame work, which would allow me to rest ‘Flynn Steel’ on it while I work on it over the winter.
Following on from my first post detailing how I forgot to plan for the traverser, I have a couple of designs kindly drawn by Hugh again.
The first is the more labour intensive of the two and involves constructing a small spring mounted catch, which is used to lock the traverser which sits on draw runners.
Traverser Design 1
Here it is, my first ‘proper’ layout. Firstly I owe thanks to RMWeb member Hugh Flynn - whom I have named my layout after. The guy is a legend and spends his free time designing model railway layout plans for free to other forum members. Thanks Hugh.
Layout overview
The layout is going to be set in the 80’s - 90’s to allow me to run some of my ever growing fleet of diesels and associated wagons. However it was apparent that I was going to have to make a few essential purchases in order to have the ‘correct’ type of stock - what a shame. Read more…