Originally, to enable me to move in and out of the bedroom railway area, I designed and built a board that went on the end of the 2m side. This meant that it had to squeeze in between the railway board and the wardrobe. It also meant that I couldn't reach the top end of the board as it was now over 1m away and out of reach. I fixed the support side by including a drop down leg but could never resolve the track connections.
When my wife looks at things, she can often see what I miss. I think that I get too close to the problem. She took one look and said, why don't you come off the long end of the board into the room. My response was that it would over hang the bed, but - in fact - the old design was already going that way once I had a Class 23 and four Rheingold coaches. On looking at here suggestion, it made a lot of sense. She also commented on the fact that I had extended the original board and suggested that I should build a new board which would be in one piece rather than being three bits glues together. As we were only talking about £20 worth of 5mm foam core, this made a lot of sense.
I have a lot of dedicated tools for making up foam core so the process is easy. I make all the framing from three thicknesses of foam core cut in strips 50mm wide all stuck together with 50mm double sided tape. This is extremely strong along the length. The cross members are notched into the side members and everything is hot glued into place.
The next problem is to square it all up. I do this by hot gluing the top surface on, ensuring that the boards are nice and square.
As this board is to stick out into the room on a pair of legs, It makes sense to put some walls along the sides and ends of this board to stop anything falling off the edge or careering off the end!
To finish it off nicely, I used up the remnants of my Woodlands Scenics grass mat.
Attaching it to the main board is done in two ways. I have a couple of sockets for dowels which locate the board correctly. (As you can see, I had a couple of goes to get these in the right position). There is also a flat board added (see in the right of the above picture) that slips under the existing board between it and the desk the board is rested on. One these are in place everything is very secure.
The above shot is of the board in place before I had laid the track. The near end is supported on two legs that slot into boxes in the underneath ((see later).
The board is designed to be stored between the permanent railway and the wardrobe.
Moving things around, you can now see the two sockets for the legs. In the second image, bellow, you can see that the legs are designed to fit one inside the other for storage.
The legs are constructed using a clever knife that slices a V-shaped cut in the foam core, which makes a clear and firm fold and another that slices a 5mm piece of foam out of the board leaving the paper outer coating. Three V-shaped cuts and one notch make for a very strong box section, which is how I make the legs.
The next post will conclude this by showing the track in place and how the routing is set up.
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