When I made the baseboards for my new layout, I thought I’d have a plain scenic board between the terminus and the fiddle yard.

Recently, I thought it might be more interesting if the railway crossed over a small river before disappearing into the fiddle yard.

Trouble was I would need to cut the plain baseboard to create a below board level opening for the river.

Cutting into a perfectly good baseboard was a little daunting, but I thought I’d give it a go…

Click on an image for a larger photo.

Friends gave me some good advice, to score the plywood before cutting it. This really helped and the cut for the river came out nice and clean with no (annoying) splintering.

The river crossing itself will require a little more work. I’ve not decided what will support either end of the bridge yet, or what the bridge will be made of. (I know- I make things up as I go!)

I’ve deliberately left the plywood track bed longer than necessary, so that I can trim it back to cover the bridge supports.

The crossing itself is a short piece of N gauge set track. I used this because it’s perfectly straight and really strong. There’s a lot of plastic under the rails (!) so the temporary bridge isn’t going to sag. When I build the bridge I’ll replace this with more realistic track.

So there’s more work to do but I’m pleased with progress so far. Cutting the baseboard went much better than expected and a stream with a small bridge will add more interest.