Room and Board

A recent week's holiday and some good weather gave me an opportunity to build a baseboard for the model railway. This was the fruit of some considerable measuring, planning, scratching of head and stroking of chin. There is a great deal of advice available on the internet, but generally all baseboards are composed of a board (duh!) and a frame to support it (the base, I guess).

Materials that can be used are many and varied, and everyone seems to have their own favourites, but I chose 12mm MDF for the board. According to the forum you look at this is either the best, or worst material and is too thick or too thin. There is some consensus that 22mm x 47mm softwood for the frame 'will do'. This gave me a pretty robust baseboard, albeit somewhat heavy, which isn't a big issue as it's highly unlikely I'll be exhibiting so portability is a low priority. Layouts built for show purposes tend to be made with tops and frames made from plywood for lightness.

My original plan was to cut the top panel from a single 8ft x 4ft sheet of 9mm MDF, however there was no way I could fit that in my car and delivery would cost over £30. The compromise was to create two separate boards: one made from a 4ft x 2ft sheet of 12mm MDF I already had (see the Size Matters post); the other one was built from a 6ft x 2ft sheet and the two were bolted together. This gives me an L-shaped baseboard about 7ft x 2ft 6in (that's 1520 x 750mm for the engineers out there), with a bit extra.

Frame by Frame

The following are a few pictures of the larger baseboard under construction that show the main steps.

These are the main components: the softwood for the frame and the two pieces of MDF for the base. I wanted the base to be 30 inches wide, but I had to buy a board that was only 24 inches wide hence the two pieces.

Essential tools: electric drill, square, countersinker, screwdriver, pencil, bradawl and sandpaper (mug of coffee is out of shot). The workbench is the patio table (don't tell the missus).

Due to some, er, entertainment, that I'd had making the frame for the smaller baseboard I adopted a more sensible approach with the larger. This time, rather than building the outside of the frame then fitting the cross piece, the end and cross pieces were fixed to one of the long frame sides first.

Ensuring the lengths of end and cross pieces are the same is crucial, as is making sure the ends are square. If I had a proper workshop with a bench mounted saw this would have been trivial. Instead I persevered with a tenon saw and the results weren't too shabby; probably would have got a B from my old woodwork teacher. The final side of the frame was added and, shockingly, the corners were square!

The larger of the two MDF boards were then fixed with great care being taken with the edge that would abut to the smaller baseboard. Reasoning the that the machine cut edge of the boards were going to be straighter than I could cut them (I need that workshop), I made sure these were the edges that would be joined. Just prior to fixing the board I drilled some holes through the inner cross pieces so that wires could be run along the underside of the baseboards.

The larger and smaller baseboards were clamped together and two holes drilled through both frames. The baseboards were then joined with a couple of bolts bought from Wilkinson's, using wing nuts so the two could be more easily dismantled, if required. My original plan was to mount the baseboards on legs, and I had bought some 42mm square wood for this purpose. It became apparent that it would be much easier and save considerable profanity to screw a batten on the wall to support the baseboard. The other end is currently resting on an existing desk. This rather slovenly arrangement will need to be addressed eventually, but at present it serves its purpose.

So, the action turns now to planning the layout of the track. I'll leave those thoughts to another post.

10 Years Have Got Behind You...

... or more like 25 since I last did any serious railway modelling. Leafing through the latest copy of Railway Modeller I realised things have moved on considerably in the intervening years. Back then it seemed little changed year on year; new models were introduced, of course, but I recall the biggest change was the introduction of Z gauge back in 1972 (crikey!).

Here are two 'Things I Didn't Know I Needed To Worry About'.

Track Record
No problem here, surely. I've plenty of track to make the most ambitious layout in the space I have available (or will have - see previous post). That was before I watched a careful explanation on YouTube by ngaugeuk why the track I have (99% Peco Code 80) is as prototypically accurate as Brio. The sleeper and rail heights are the main problem. With Code 80 track at 2mm scale the scale height of each is about 30cms which is much too high.

Peco Finescale Code 55 is the answer then? Well, not quite. Apparently, as with Code 80, the sleepers are too close together. I've measured them and it's true, they are, but I can live with that and the towering rail and sleeper heights of Code 80 too.

Zeroes and Ones
Ooh, this is a good one! Back in the 20th century if you wanted to make a model locomotive move, you'd connect a wire from a controller to each rail and turn the knob. To make it go t'other way just turn the knob the other way (or flick a switch). Then came Digital Command Control (DCC).

By fitting decoders into each locomotive you can control them individually, even if they're on the same stretch of track. This makes double-heading practical and means the sectioning and wiring that was mandatory when modelling MPDs is no longer required.

The drawback is that all the locos I possess were produced before DCC became a commercial reality. I doubt that any are even 'DCC ready'; when they were purchased it was the era when VCRs were still considered cutting edge technology. Whilst it may be that I can retrofit a DCC encoder into some I doubt that it will be possible for all of them.

So, decision made - stick with conventional control? Not necessarily. There are two ways round this. Firstly, DCC is able to control a single non-DCC loco using address 0; this is not ideal as you can only run one loco like this. Secondly, the layout can be wired to accommodate both types of control - DCC locos will happily run under analogue control. Actually, in the tradition of Monty Python, there is a third option which is to buy new DCC locos, and I will need new rolling stock.

Only Time Will Tell
At present both trackwork and train control are a little way in the future. The next major challenge is building a baseboard, and there are a myriad different ways of doing that, including paying someone else to do it for you. I, however, shall apply my O-level woodwork skills and build my own.