Another Present

I've mentioned Tim Horn's excellent laser cut products  a few times before. I'm using his standard baseboards for TAoC and in the meantime I'm displaying my stock on one of his display standards.

With Xmas out of the way I've just got round to opening the package containing the second baseboard which has been lying around in my office for weeks. I was a little chastened therefore to discover that because Tim felt the order had been delayed being dispatched he'd included one of his A4 scenic boards with it as a gift. Incidentally I thought the order was sent out quite promptly and wasn't aware of any delay.

So now the dilemma is what to do with it? I already have a second Apa based diorama underway to showcase the Lcut buildings, and the original Apa is about to be re-used for a 7mm tramway layout.

A small diorama using the Sentinel is one option, another is a 4mm tramway scene. Then again I still hanker after a return to narrow gauge modelling. I've even got a Smallbrook Studio Nellie hiding somewhere in a draw that needs a home.

Not the Scaleforum News

This was going to be a photo-report on my first trip to Scaleforum.

Unfortunately cumulative flight delays to and from Amsterdam meant that by Saturday there was no way I could face another day of travelling. I was beginning to feel a bit brighter on Sunday, but so was the weather which persuaded me both to clean out the garden shed and to re-visit the saga of the baseboard legs.

Fairly quickly it became apparent that what I thought was a design fault I'd built into both pairs of legs was actually a constructional fault that only affected the one pair and which was quickly rectified with a hammer and a screwdriver.

That still leaves me with the problem of adding stability to a high and narrow baseboard that needs to be assembled around existing furniture in my home office, and which can standalone without the baseboard in place. I suspect I might be on a fools errand, though I have a couple of ideas to try out still.

I also found the time to assemble the Tim Horn laser cut baseboard kit I bought with the tramway layout in mind. Not that it needed much time, it just fell together with minimal effort on my part.

Now the baseboards I've already built for the Art of Compromise are OK, but I'm beginning to think Tim's might be a better bet for long term use, if only because they are deeper and the alignment between boards is so well thought out. My tramway plan might also need a bigger board if I adopt the plan so that the trams never need to reverse, avoiding the trolley pole and the driver position being out of synch.

The reason I built my own boards in the first place is because my slight variation on the design meant the turnout to the coal staithes siding would be right over a baseboard join if I used 3ft long boards.

But having rethought the design I think it works best as Roy first drew the plan, which means that 3ft boards aren't an issue. The trouble is that means returning to the arcane universe of Templot to make the revisions,

The photos feature one of my Airfix 14XXs. The good news is that the Ultrascale EM gauge wheelsets for it arrived last week. 

The bad news is today an email arrived from Mainly Trains to say they no longer stock the 14XX detailing pack, or the chassis to fit the GEM Cambrian 2-4-0T. 

Both bits of news are a very serious blow to my plans.

Legless

OK, confession time. Not my first and it won't be my last.

I've often remarked that what catches tyro modellers out is the silly stuff.

Building the baseboards for Upwold had gone really well, and I was congratulating myself on the legs being relatively sturdy and how easy the adjustable feet made it to get the boards level. Not only that but I was also really happy with the working height I'd chosen.

Then I decided to take the boards down so I could work on them as individual units

Which is when I realised the implication of having decided to make the layout semi-portable.

Many years ago my brother was helping my parents move some furniture out of our house in Herefordshire. In those pre-Ikea days I think it had probably come from Waring & Gillow, but it was still intended for home assembly.

But not for home dis-assembly, as my brother discovered when by removing one part he caused the whole wardrobe to collapse around him.

Gentle reader, you will be ahead of me by now.

Suffice to say as I lifted one of the boards I had a brief Wile E. Coyote moment of utter calm just before the rest of the layout crashed to the ground.

Looking back I can see where I went wrong. OK a child of five could see what I got wrong, but probably not why I got it wrong. To accommodate the existing furniture in the office I abandoned my original plan to use trestles. Instead I decided to use simple plug in pairs of legs. To be quite honest if I'd put the layout up in the intended semi permanent home the unexpected consequences of taking it apart wouldn't have been that bad, because the units it is fitting in around would have kept most of the pieces in place. But setting it up on the (patio/terrace/slabs - delete as appropriate) meant the safety net wasn't there.

So back to the drawing board. I suspect it might just mean building a different set of legs if Upwold ever goes on the road.

In the meantime I've not been making much other progress to report on. Once again lots of disparate jobs are progressing slightly rather than having any single project making significant progress. I'm hoping for some big news on the building front very soon though.

As a taster the guys at Lcut have taken on board some of my comments about their small signal box kit and both increased the size of the door to 4mm proportions and, much more impressively, managed to cut recessed windows.

This remember, sells for the pocket money price of  £6.00 when other laser cut buildings are being sold at premium prices.

Baseboard Blues

Building the baseboards for Upwold has felt like a long slog at times. In reality they have gone together quite quickly in terms of working hours. Most of the delay has been down to trying to find time, the constraint of never having enough clamps, and waiting for glue to dry. Oh yes, and because most of my woodwork has to take place outdoors the weather has been a factor as well.

I had some bleak moments today though.

The first was whilst trying to clamp together the base for the traverser table. It took me far longer than it should have done to realise that the clamps I were using weren't actually clamping on the right combination of parts..

I also ran into a few avoidable issues with establishing  the best method of joining the baseboards in the correct alignment. In the end I've gone for a combination of techniques. I'm using some lightweight dowels and toggles from Station Road Baseboards for those times when I'm going to want to quickly join the boards together during construction, but for semi-permanent alignment I'm using  C+L tee nuts That was a late decision, and to be honest once I've got the boards mounted on legs it might prove to be overkill, but I was worried by the lack of rigidity relying on the just the dowels and toggles.  I would have made life easier for myself had I drilled the holes for the |bolts earlier in construction.

And then, just as I finished, I remembered that I had some removable pin hinges lying around, which is what I'd originally planned to use and would probably have been the best all round option.

And then, just as I was putting everything away, it suddenly dawned on em that I'd made no provision for cabling between the boards. Fortunately a hole cutter sorted that problem out fairly quickly.

Baseboards and Things

I'm a past master of procrastination. Like Douglas Adams I love deadlines because of the whooshing sound they make as they fly by

This week I have mostly been not building baseboards.

I've charged the jigsaw, I've got out the trusty but slightly rusty Workmate. I've been to the back of the shed and retrieved both my first attempt at a 4'x2' effort and the remaining timber and plywood.

And I've stared at it all from lots of different angles.

What I haven't done is started to build the baseboards.

There are three reasons why:

The first is I keep looking at the minute luggage space in our new car, an IQ, and wondering how I could ever get anything to fit. Realistically I think 2'6" x 18" might be the maximum board size that would fit, allowing for some way of stacking the boards. To put how small it is in to context we can no longer use a normal shopping trolley if we want to get the groceries home. Of course I'm not planning to transport the layout that often, if at all, but I know if I don't plan for it the need will arise..

Secondly I need to think about how any layout is going to fit into my home office, both during construction and once built. the real challenge is that I don't have space for both a layout and a workbench. That actually favours a slightly larger baseboard so that it can double as a workbench in the early stage of layout building - which in my case could easily mean at least a couple of years.

Thirdly there is that terrible fear of settling on a final decision and then having to live with it. I've changed my mind about the final form I want the layout to take several times before breakfast today.

This was one of the crazier ideas, with a proscenium arch obscuring much of the view and the track curving out towards a removable  fiddle yard placed at the front of the layout for operation so trains seem to appear from "somewhere" rather than just from the stage wings.

Apologies for the poor drawing, I've just changed my mouse and mouse mat and I haven't got used to it yet.

The damp patch?

 Reason number four: whilst I was procrastinating one of the dogs cocked his leg on it all.

Why I failed woodwork

I went to a grammar school that had a definite leaning towards developing practical skills, be they scientific, computing, technical drawing, woodwork, or metal work. they even insisted the boys studied home economics and sewing.

To be honest I pretty much flunked all those subjects, and an afternoon spent in the company of my rusting Black & Decker Workmate has reminded me why. Even when I know what I am supposed to be doing things go wrong, never mind when I'm trying something new.

So the end result is I have one mini baseboard to practice track construction on, and one very doubtful looking 4' x 2' baseboard to form the basis of LM. I might spend tomorrow building a the sector plate board, or at least the basic components of it. oddly I've decided to build the smaller of my two possible schemes. I'm also thinking about flipping it around so the sector plate will be in the corner of the room and the station area will be closer to window light.

If I was continuing with OO the appearance of the baseboard wouldn't worry me too much, after all it will have a cosmetic fascia attached to it - another job for tomorrow if I'm lucky. What worries me moving to EM is whether I've built it with a flat enough top for good running.

Still there is a lot of practicing to be done before I lay any track for real, and Templot to be mastered. If all else fails I'm sure I'll find some use for it,after all it will soon be November.

Baseboards and Basics

When I was a child the family model railways were always built on big heavy baseboards with a Sundeala top, None of them, so far as I can remember, had legs, so they depended for support on whatever was convenient, and none of them consisted of more than one board.

My odd adult forays into indoor model railways have all involved small cameo scenes, and to be honest I have probably gone to the other extreme when it comes to their construction, being quite happy to use card, balsa, plywood and foam board. It is probably best to draw a veil over the fiberglass experiment.

One thing the Apa experiment has taught me is that there is no substitute for having a flat surface that can survive construction and scenic treatments without distorting. That is another way of saying the foam board  baseboard ended up getting so twisted that actually running trains is a bit of a lottery.

So for Llanhraiadr I'm planning to use Iain Rice's relatively lightweight L girder approach using cheap batten timber and a plywood top.In theory this should be simplicity itself to build, but I'm not looking forward to it. If I can get it to work though I've hopefully got a repeatable approach that will take a lot of the fear out of future projects.

The more I think things through the more I think there is too big a gap between what you can do as a modeler buying things in shops and what you have to do if you want to really start modelling something. There is no easy progression it seems. As soon as you want to move from playing trains you have to contend with a whole raft of new techniques, with no obvious or easy order in which to do learn them. Building baseboards, laying track, electrics, scenic work, buildings...all have to be developed in sync.

There must be a better way. If nothing else it should be possible to design a simple baseboard for beginners to build that would include a basic electrical bus.