Monday, 4 January 2010

Nearly there!


Happy New Year to anyone who reads this blog!

I am now in the rather slow process of clearing the loft to make way for the layout, it will be a fairly slow process as there is so much c**p up there! However, once clear I hope to have a nice modelling room which will allow for the layout to be up all the time and create some storage underneath.

Over the holidays I came up with a sketch of a loco design based on a combination of North British Railway tank locos, this is likely to be based on a Graham Farish 08 chassis using Backwoods Miniatures valve gear.


I'm hoping to make a start on this to coincide with the testing of the track on the new layout so that it can be the first loco to properly turn a wheel on it.

Finally, I've decided on the form of the baseboards, I will be using the same principal as Pempoul (so it can't be bad!), that is a ply outer frame to provide some rigidity and an extruded (pink) foam insulation centre for the running surface and scenic foundation. This should prove strong and lightweight, the latter being important as it will take two people to man handle (or should that now be person handle) the boards down from my loft!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Tom - I have gone for a foam board surrounded by 2x1 pse for the Port solent boathouse (009 matt)

Tom said...

So I see Matt, I've also seen articles on it from Gordon Gravett (re. Pempoul), and on JdFs website recently.

It seems to be gaining favour. The only thing that may be an issue is the size of the board and how well it will work on the curved sections.

Zabdiel said...

There's some stuff about it here - this guy has been trying various things to cut curves, he's got a conventional baseboard underneath (ok it's a bit unusual but it's made of wood at least).

Simon K said...

How will you handle point motors with a base board that thick?

Tom said...

Thanks John, I'll have a read of that link!

Simon, I was considering mounting them on top of the baseboard at the rear of the baseboard actuating the points through wire in tube. That way they could all be hidden in buildings or beneath point motors.