Welcome back to “Recycling A Railway Layout,” Part 2. In this part I will be explaining how I put together my New Baseboard, built out of the old baseboard from the Boddington layout.
The first thing I want to point out is that the new baseboard was designed on CAD, Using Draftsight and Google’s SketchUp. So that is how I got the dimensions for the last part when I cut the old baseboard down to size.
A) I first set about building the frame to support the Baseboard, this is a simple construction made out of 37X17mm Pine soft wood. I used this type and size of wood for the first layout cause it was cheap from the local B&Q over the road, it was about £1.50 for 3 meters but I paid nothing this time cause all the wood was off the old layout. So I have saved about £15!
B) The frame is a really simple affair a rectangle made from 4 pieces of pine, with one support beam in the middle, I decided on only one support cause the baseboard is thick for a small area at 12mm, so any more would have been over kill I thought. Also I only drilled and screwed the frame together as when the baseboard is secured to the frame, the whole structure will be more than strong enough to support the whole layout.
C) I then laid the Board on top of the frame to make sure it fit. It is best to do this before you screw the top down, cause you can adjust the frame much easily now, than having to take off the top later.
D) Once I was happy that the board would fit on top of the frame, I then drilled and countersunk 8 screws per half of the baseboard to secure it to the frame. Remember if you countersink the screws it is easier to hide them! “As we all know you don’t see 4ft screw heads sticking out of the ground in real life.”
E) Now that the first half of the layout is built, I planed the top on all edges to make it flush with the frame. I then repeated this process of making this half of the layout to build the second half. Then I sanded and planned the ends of the two half’s so that they fitted flush up to one another. Cause if you don’t the layout will look poorly put together, and when you lay the track the it will prove difficult to align one bit of track with the other on the joint.
F) Once the two half have been built and then I set about fitting the two half’s together, I tipped the whole structure on its side and lined the two half back up, making sure I have secured them to my work houses with clamps (as I don’t want them falling over and damaging any of the work I have already done.) And then clamped them together to make sure it is perfectly aligned for the next bit of the construction.
G) To Make sure the two half’s perfectly align every time I drilled two holes to fit bolts, on the bolts I put a washer on both sides of the frames. Then fitted wing nuts on both the bolts, this will allow the layout to be broken down quickly and put together just as quick.
H) Now that the bolts have been fitted I have filled the countersunk holes with poly-filler and any other deep holes or marks, this will help the track be laid flush with the board. But I did leave a bit of imperfection in the board as the world/ground is not completely flat, then I gave the whole board another light sanding to remove any lose bits of wood, paint or ballast that I may have missed.
I) Once I was happy with the board I laid the track down so I could make sure I was happy with the way the layout was going to look. As cause whiles I wait for the paint to dry in the next stage of construction, I could clean all the track I was going to use, as all the track has been reclaimed from the old layout and still had some ballast and PVA glue attached.
J) Once I was completely happy with the size and look of the layout baseboard I painted the whole of the top. I used a matt-paint for this job as I had a bottle of black poster paint lying around, so for the sake of using black instead of brown I saved my self about £2. I have applied a base-coat now so that if there is any bit of the senery that does not cover the baseboard it will not show up as bad as the chipboard look would.
K) I then cut and temporarily fitted the back drops to make sure they were correct. I then put them in a safe place so I can permanently attach them later I the build. I also attached the front fascia to the layout and painted it black (Was painted black after this photo.)
So you can see this project is stating to look like a layout now, also I would like to add “you can never have enough clamps!” They are the one tool that has helped me no end in this part.
I think many people have a rough idea what we mean when we say CAD. C for computer, certainly. A for aided or assisted – you pick. D for design or drawing. I say drawing. But hey – again you pick. The basic idea with CAD is that you use your computer to draw things you hope to make. But just like tools in the shop - there are many approaches, varieties, and levels of quality – and many opinions about which is better.
Here’s my take based on nearly 45 years of drawing things I intended to build or have someone build for me.
But first I digress. My first attempt at mechanical drawing, as it was called back then, was at Erie Community College – just outside of Buffalo NY in 1969. I went to the bookstore to buy my supplies. Those triangles, scales, tee square, eraser (critical tool) and all else on the list were really cool. (Both “mechanical drawing” and “cool” indicate I am of a different era.) Then I went to class and sat at my drafting table. It was impossible to draw the line my instructor wanted – uniform thickness – no smudging. I could barely keep my pencil point pointed!!! And to clearly have two lines meet? Well just say that my drawings were at the lower end of the class in terms of quality. It was a tough semester. No job prospects as a draftsman.
Decades later came the computer with a basic drawing capability. The computer could ”draw” lines of uniform thickness – and if you were real careful with the mouse it let two lines meet exactly in a corner. Home free – no smudges. Where were you, computer, in 1969?
Move ahead to 2011 – the basic drawing packages have long been replaced by this thing called CAD, which in my opinion automates the drawing of lines. It took a, for me, a painful process of drawing lines and made it easier. But you see it could have done soooo much more.
I heard a radio story about LED lighting. An engineer was telling of the potential of LED lighting – like being “painted” onto a wall to make a very large light. But interestingly – the basic LED bulb target output was 60 watts. Why? Because that was what dear old Edison picked and — we don’t want to be too different now, do we? And why did Edison pick 60 watts of output? Because – yep you got it – that was roughly the output of that amazing technology of his time – gas lights. I wonder if the cave torch was also rated at 60 watts. So here we are with LED technology picking a standard set by a lighting system hundreds of years old. Having the computer draw lines for design is like having LED lights at 60 watts. It could be so much more but its developers were looking backwards – not at the light bulb but the drafting table.
When using computers in design, we can choose to stick to the 60 watt bulb approach or take full advantage of new technology. What is the difference? Instead of drawing lines to make rectangles and rectangles to make cubes to make our woodworking projects – let’s just jump ahead to using the computer to model actual-virtual (think!) 3D boards and such. Then we can easily move these boards around in 3D space — getting instant feedback on our designs. Somewhat like moving pieces of wood around on our assembly tables or workbenches. At that point we are not involved not with lines and boxes, but with our design.
And if the software is easy enough to use and we can learn to do this in an evening or a maybe day — then we really have computer assisted design.
Welcome to the start of an exciting series of “Recycling A Railway Layout” In this part I will be showing how I dismantled my first layout Boddington, I will also be explaining how to salvage lots of materials from an old layout. All the materials will then be reused on the new layout that I am going to build Voxville TMD.
A) The first thing to do is to remove as much of the track as possible. I removed all the track pins that I have use to secure the track with a pair of pliers.
B) Because all the track that I have layed on this layout has been ballasted with ballast scatter, I then used an old chisel to prise the track away from the baseboard.
C) As you can see I managed very carefully to salvage lots of the track. Be mindful the more track and points you save the less you will have to buy for the next layout, So I managed to save all the points Which is a saving of over £80. I then removed any remaining ballast from the track.
D) Then I set about removing as much ballast from the baseboard as I could with an old chisel, so it can be reused (I will be explaining how to clean up this ballast later in this series) Please Note: WEAR GOGGLES WHEN REMOVING THE BALLAST, as pieces of ballast can fly up and hit you in the eye.
E) When removing the ballast make sure you use an Old Chisel as it will blunt quickly! And will need sharpening before any other use. And you don’t really want to ruin your best woodwoking chisel, do you? Now is a good time to remove any fixing that are keeping the baseboard to the layout frame.
F) Then brush down the baseboard sweeping all the ballast into a container, I ended up using 2 more containers of this size once I had finished removing all the ballast from the baseboard. There is about 20 standard packets of ballast in this container, so that is a saving of about £40.
G) Now cause I want to salvage as much material as possible then I am going to use the baseboard, but given that the original size of the board is 1200x660mm and I only want 900x400mm it is going to have to be cut down. So with a pencil draw out the area you want to keep. Cutting down the old baseboard for the new layout has saved me over £10.
H) Now this is a good time to think about keeping any features from the old layout, as I have decided to keep two bits, Ramblers corner and a bit of fenced area. What you will see in the picture is that I have chiselled away any remaining scatter and scenery from the area I am going to cut.
I) Now that I have decided to keep part of the original scenery it has presented me with a bit of a problem. A part of the old track is sticking over the line I am going to cut, so time to get out the Hacksaw and cut through this part of the baseboard.
J) Well as you can now see better in this picture i have cut through the bit of track. You may also consider if you are keeping scenery from your old layout, to cut through any material with (like ballast) as cutting through metal or stone is going to blunt a wood saw.
K) Now that I have cleared all the areas of the baseboard I am going cut it to the required size for the new layout. I have decided to use a hand saw to preform this task as it would reduce any vibrations from a power saw and would stop any damage to any remaining bit of scenery. Also given there still might be stray bit of ballast I do not want to blunt a brand new saw so I used an older saw for this job.
L) I have repeated this whole process to complete two whole sections, that are 900x400mm. This has given me an area of 1800x400mm for my new layout. I have also saved over £180 in Track, Points, Wood and ballast. So you can see why recycling a layout is a Very Good Idea! and the savings have not finished yet.
In The Next Part
Part 2 ‘Building A New Baseboard’
I will be explaining how I constructed the new baseboard from the pieces that I have cut from this part. Also how I reused the frame of the old layout to make the new frame.
I bought two pieces of wood that were wide enough and longer than size 9 slippers. To try and make wooden clogs for fun.
Thought I had allowed enough width of about 10mm either side. Mum and dad think it is going to take longer than I first thought. I drew round my feet with a pencil onto the wood. Used hammer and chisel to create the heel part of the shoe. Having got some depth of wood removed, decided to use a drill to create a sloping angle to the toes. Whilst still leaving a cover or a cavity in the wooden block.
Well it has been mulling over in my head for sometime now, shall I build a New Railway Layout? Well finally I have had an idea, why don’t I build a small layout that will fit on the single bed in my Home Office. Well if I said the whole idea came from my head I would be lying, as the start of this idea came from reading this months issue of British Railway Modelling (Issue Jan 2012 Vol19 No10, Available from all good stockiest in the UK.) As there was an article on the layout ‘Langwith Road, Making the most of a small space’ and the idea was born.
Sketching The Idea
A 3D CAD view of the layout created in Google SketchUp
Well like with most of my designs I first sketch the idea out on Google’s SketchUp, this is so I can get a rough idea of the look of what I am designing is correct for what I want. So with measuring the space that the layout will be occupying, I got the measurements 1800mm by 400mm (70 inches by 16 inches) so as you can imagine this is going to be a small layout. But you can see from the picture it will be a two seprate sections that make up the whole layout. With a surrounding backdrop, which the setting will still be decided.
Construction Materials
Well the main part of the construction materials will be recycled from my first layout ‘Boddington’ as money is not at a premium and it is a great idea to recycle on what ever you are doing. So the frame work of this layout will be made from 17mm x 37mm pine, and thankfully I have a lot of this material in my workshop. The the main part of the baseboard will be made of 12mm chipboard again cause I have alot of it in my workshop, even though a lot of Railway Modellers prefer to use Ply wood for this application I am not too fussed. And ply wood seems to be a very expensive option for me right now. Then the backdrop for this layout will be made of 3mm hardboard and yes you guessed it “Cause I have a lot of this laying around my workshop.” So now that I have the idea and I know what materials I will be using time to make the plans.
Creating The Plans
Well I know that most people won’t go to the extremes of creating a full 2D CAD drawing of a model layout, and would just prefer to just draw the plans on a piece of paper with a pencil. But I think it is something that can be over looked as it sometimes highlights problems with my ideas and I can change the plan before I start construction of any project, to avoid wasting any materials. As I am always reminded that “The key to a strong building is solid foundations”
When drawing my 2D CAD Plans I use DraftSighta free professional 2D CAD design product made by Dassault Systemes, as I proberly have mentioned many times before. If you would like to find out where to download you own copy of DraftSight you can do so using this link.
As you can see from the picture to the right of this text I have laid out the plans for the construction in the form of 4 views a front view, a side view, a bottom view and an Isometric view. Having all these views on one sheet with all the dimentions will greatly reduce any error in the building of this layout baseboard. With the addition of an Isometric View to can help to visualise the whole construction when building the separate parts.
Naming The Layout
As normal for me I tent to name layout after something around me or something that has influenced the build of the layout, as I am sure it is for many other modeller that are designing a fictional railway layout. For example the ‘Boddington‘ Layout was named so as I drunk Boddington’s Bitter while I was laying the track and making the scenery so I named it ‘Boddington.’ And the trend continued on with the layout, ‘Fosters Rail Scrapyard‘ guess what I was drinking when I modelled that particular section of the layout?
But how did I come up with ‘Voxville TMD‘? Well it was not as interesting as my last layout, cause I knew I wanted to model a Train Maintenance Depo ‘TMD‘ so that was a start. But what to name it, well while I was thinking of fictional name I glanced over my right shoulder and saw my VOX Guitar amplifier. And the name was fixed ‘Voxville TMD‘
The Build
Now that I have all these views available to me on one sheet I can start the build part of this project.
Welcome back to “Recycling A Railway Layout,” Part 2. In this part I will be explaining how I put together my New Baseboard, built out of the old baseboard from the Boddington layout.
