Recycling A Railway Layout, Part 2 ‘Building A New Baseboard’

Article created on 21/12/2011 by Greg Durrant

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. In The Next Part Part 3, ‘Laying The Track’