The woodworking has progressed to the point where I have a new baseboard. Ta, Da.

The scenic part of the layout, the yard of a small engineering works, will occupy the central part of the layout (on the brown central board in the photo below).

There will be two traversers, one on either side. These will be hidden by the buildings. The left hand traverser will represent the line entering and exiting the yard. On the right hand side will be the inside of the engineering works.

The whole baseboard has been built quite quickly (by my standards).

I didn’t spend too much time choosing the materials or designing it to be lightweight. Most materials are what I had to hand. The frame is 20mm (approx. ¾ inch) thick softwood , the grey panels that hold the traversers are melamine faced chipboard, offcuts from our new kitchen cupboards. The baseboard itself is 12mm (approx. ½ inch) thick ply, that I brought specifically for this job. Overall the baseboard is 114cm long by 46cm wide (roughly 45 x 18 inches). Yes, it’s heavier than I’d expected (!) but I’ve built it quickly and I’m moving forward with the layout idea. I think that’s a good compromise.

I’ve never built a traverser before, so I did spent some time thinking how to do that. The traversers run between the edge of the central (scenic) part of the baseboard and the raised edge at the end of the frame. It seems to work, they stay aligned and slide quite well. The real test will be how well they work when they have track and stock on top of them. That’s something for the future…