Steve

Springwell: Skip Dive Baseboard

The idea of a small shunting layout featuring an 18 inch gauge agricultural railway appeals to me.

I decided to make a start and build the baseboard. Click on a photo for a larger image.

All my projects start with detailed engineering drawings (not) 🙂
The rough track plan was useful before cutting the plywood.
It helps with marking out the cuts on the 9mm plywood.
After cutting: the baseboard, the edges and the back scene.
Rough pieces of scrap 5.5mm ply to create a raised track bed.
These were glued to the top of the baseboard and weighted down.
A river was sketched onto the boards.
The river section before cutting.
The first cut removes the edge of the base board.
The second cut removes the river section.
The edges pieces were glued and screwed in place.
Three edge pieces in place and the river bank piece in position.
Simple strengthening pieces were glued to the edges at the front of the baseboard.
The long front edge and two cross bracing pieces were glued in place.
The base board seen from above.
A piece of 3.5mm plywood was glued to the front of the board. The point and section control switches will go here.
The back scene was bolted to the rear of the baseboard… and the job was done!

The baseboard and back scene were made from a sheet of 9mm plywood that I… er… rescued from a skip. (I did ask before I took it… honest!).

The track bed was made from odd scraps of 5.5mm ply wood that I had kept ‘because they might be useful one day’. Finally, they were 🙂

I decided to do two things that are different (for me at least):

  • There will be a back scene at the back of the layout but not at the edges.
    (I can always add back scenes to the edges if I decide they are needed).
  • The control switches for the points and isolating sections will be on a slightly lowered panel at the front of the layout.
    (This will be a home layout, residing on a desk or table, and this seems a convenient way of creating a built in control panel. We shall see if this works in practice).

Next job will be painting the edges, the ground and the back scene or perhaps making the river bed and river banks. Oh, and I still need to build a small, detachable fiddle yard for this too. So many decisions….

I have several projects in progress at the moment (two layouts and a loco build)… we shall see how quickly they progress.

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