Tonight has seen the first real tangible progress on the layout - although there isn't a lot to show for it.

What I have done is to print out the XtrkCad plan in 1.1 scale, and tape it on the board. Now that I've worked out that the gap in the middle was down to the printer rather than any fault of mine, I'm pretty pleased with it - the layout flows nicely, with something that I had previously only seen on screen now taking physical shape.

This though is the easy part - what comes next is something I'm a little apprehensive about. For the Baseboards, I'm planning something completely new to me. I mentioned way back at the start that I am a big fan of Iain Rice's writings, and in his 1990 book 'An Approach to Model Railway Layout Design - Finescale in Small Spaces' he introduced the concept of Jigsaw Baseboards.

 

"As you may have gathered by now, baseboard joints are a 'bete noire' of mine, and I have long sought ways of making them far less obvious than the usual regular interval ruler-straight geological faults. The 'jigsaw' baseboard design is the most radical way I have yet come up with of achieving this, although the notion at present exists in three basic variations"

Iain Rice, Model Railway Layout Design Finescale in Small Spaces, Pg 20

Iain then goes on to discuss the first two - but it was the third that caught my eye - that of splitting the whole baseboard into 'chunks', which connect, jigsaw-like, to form the whole layout.

Putting that in the concept of Litlington...

Apologies for the ugly red lines, but it is the best way of demonstrating. The layout will be physically divided (and I mean completely divided, the individual parts will be held together with dowels (as in flat pack furniture) and over-centre catches when in use, but otherwise totally separate) into 6 sections as shown above.

Looking at each one in turn, you can see that Sections 1, 3, 5 and 6 are purely scenic. Sections 2 and 4 carry the track - with the wiring run along the front of the battens (I'm planning on using the glued ply method of ply-softwood block-ply. Dowels will locate into the softwood block, with the catches on the ends of each section to join it to its neighbour). The main reason for going with this method is to try to avoid obvious joins, but also to enable the layout to be split easily for transport (Sections 2 and 4 joined together electronically by plugs and sockets) - as I'll be using DCC, there will be a main bus, with droppers to each individual piece of track. Sections 2 and 4 will be wide enough to accomodate the track, wiring and Tortoise Point Motors, but little else - so I should be able to hide the join to the scenic pieces fairly easily (expanded below)

You'll also see that those big red lines run straight through two of the buildings - they will be demountable, for safety's sake (I'm going to be scratchbuilding both, so this would have been a sensible option anyway).

As for the other joints, the lineside fence should take care of the one along the back, whilst the one running through the goods yard should be taken care of with the usual gunk and ash that forms the 'ballast' in this area. The only one that is a slight concern is the (unavoidable, whatever method of baseboard) join in the track in the middle (sections 2-4) - hopefully I'll be able to hide this from normal viewing angles with some careful placement of greenery - as the layout is intended to be viewed at close to eye level, hopefully it won't be too obvious in any case.

Thoughts on this are more than welcome!