Baseboards completed - Time to build a railway!
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.
My plan was a simple one, fix the last 3 plywood tops to the base framework and then set about trying to lay the outer loop of my track plan - i.e. get something down so I can play trains 
Sadly this didn’t quite go to plan, what with my illness, the wife being home (wife distracting me) and the lack of cork underlay, it didnt happen. Then I had to set the printer up to work off my laptop where the xtrkcad files are stored, this took about an hour. So come 14:30, having had some lunch I grabbed my wallet and headed over to Church Street Models in Basingstoke. Now I had a specific shopping list of things I had to get which was:
- Cork underlay
- Flexi track - lots
- Couple of Peco SL-88 Right Hand Large Slips
- Metal track joiners
However, as usual I didn’t come back with just the things I wanted. Church Street Models is one of the those places where I want everything, so I came back with:
- 11 Metres of Flexi track
- 3 rolls of cork underlay
- only 1 SL-88 (ordered the other)
- 3 packs of track joiners
- some track pins - I use the to hold things in place while glue sets
- Pack of 3 Hornby Tope wagons - 25% off rrp
- pair of Bachmann Intermodal wagons for my brother - 25% off
- New Hornby R2701 Intercity HST
- 4 Peco point motors
So having spent a good hour chatting with the owner and selecting my purchases I headed home. By the time I got home it was about 16:45 and one of the kids was back from nursery so the garage was a no go zone for the remainder of the day 
On the brightside though, tomorrow is a new day and I have no work again, woo.
Here are some pictures of the completed boards, just need to brush them off and tidy the rest of the garage up before I start laying track etc. I really would like to get some track down and powered tomorrow, just hope the man flu holds off.
Have you thought about putting in a backscene, before the other scenics. Since once the basboard scenics are down it’s going to get harder to put the backscene in, especially if you then decide to add wispy clouds in the corners!
Ian
Hi
I have now created in my garage a layout similar to yours using 9mm marine ply i now wish to purchase rolls of cork but am met with blank stares when trying to obtain this item, can you help?
jim
Try Ebay for your cork. Postage adds to the shop cost but you can get most things you need delivered to your door, saves the hasstle of going around looking & eventually buying lots of things that you hadn’t planned for.