After months years of chewing over the next phase of Keyhaven everywhere I turned there were self-created compatability issues and also the legacy of bits that could have been better so I'd decided some time back that its offspring would recreate some of the old but improve upon it, especially from an operation viewpoint, and take the idea a stage further.

If I keep deliberating and looking for problems it'll never happen so now is the time of year to make a start, a time when you can traipse in and out of the house fetching and cutting things without turning the rest of the house distinctly nippy.

A pile of wood, today.

A picture of a pile of wood shouldn't really merit an illustration but it's there to say that I thought that part through too and saved myself a whole bundle of time in return for a fiver by getting Jewson to cut the ply. It seems fewer and fewer of the DIY tin sheds actually trust their staff to cut bent timber in straight lines or for customers to not end up with splinters and claim inordinate levels of dosh for psychological trauma of timber related injuries. It's hardly top quality but with the construction techniques I'll be using it won't be a problem.

Within 30 minutes a ply sandwich forms the first 3'6" x 2' baseboard frame, fairly lightweight and reasonably rigid (well it will be when the cross-member goes in when I've finally decided on point locations). Another layer of ply or foamboard will sit upon the ply deck. I was tempted to go with foamboard for the whole thing but some recent experiences told me I'd possibly get frustrated with the amount of bracing required to eliminate any variations in level that could happen if unsupported.

Another timesaver was to use a staple gun as the principal tool rather than ommer'n'nails or screwing it together.

So what will K2yhaven look like? It will be the equivalent of turning the existing layout through 90 degrees (on the right of the plan) with the station at 90 degrees to the quay across the back of the layout. The station will be a terminus formed from a truncated branch route. The left foreground will be a boat yard with a ramp down onto a car ferry with the centre foreground being the harbour water.

My target is to get it reasonably complete by Taunton next April.

The topic will run here but significant posts will be copied over to the blog as a digest.

Source: K2yhaven