Didn't Have A Leg To Stand On

Quadruped

When I first built the baseboard I was somewhat lazy and used an existing desk as the support for one end. It slowly dawned on me that accessing the underneath of the part of the baseboard that rested on the desk would be challenging. I had originally bought some wood for legs so I dismantled the baseboards (and the desk), measured up, sawed through, screwed on and rebuilt. They say lazy people go to the most trouble.

Wait, There's More!

Not only does the baseboard boast legs it now has some track on it too. The general layout I'd decided upon was shown in a picture in the last post, but at the time nothing was fixed down as I was still tinkering with the positioning of the points. Before the track was fixed I glued some 2mm thick cork sheet onto the baseboard to act as a track bed and to provide some sound deadening. The track was then pinned through this. Actually it was nailed; the track pins I'd used on previous layouts just bent when I tried to push them into the MDF, so I resorted to small nails. The picture below shows the story so far. View to the left...

And to the right...

No, that's not junk, it's essential equipment for tracklaying. And since you may be wondering, the yellow pot is an old TetraMin fish food container.

Point & Shoot

You'll notice the gaps in the trackwork in the picture, this is due to running out of points. In an earlier post I mentioned I had decided to stick with Peco Code 80 track, however the realisation I would need more points made me review this decision. If I had to purchase more points, why not buy Code 55 with Electofrogs to replace the Code 80 ones in the station area and on the main running lines, then reuse the Code 80 points in sidings? The answer was I bought a new lens for my camera instead, leaving only enough loose change amongst the broken shards of the piggy bank for four new Code 80 points.

When these points arrive I will be able to complete the main trackwork just leaving a few sidings to do. The test coaches I have free-wheeled over the trackwork run smoothly so far and weave from track to track without derailing. The coaches have also been used to check the distances between the tracks to ensure they don't foul each other. The the gap between the adjacent trackwork in the station area looks quite realistic; too many layouts have tracks too far apart. When built the railway engineers wanted the smallest land take possible, for both cost and time reasons, but this is rarely considered in model railways.

I've a smidgeon more construction work to do on a high level section that I've tentatively planned to be a branch line station. The connection to this will start approximately where the white glue bottle is standing in the bottom picture and run along the wall to a point just off-camera on the right.

A bit more to do, then I need to see if I can make some locos run on the track.