Here we are again after a few months away from the blogsphere! I've not been idle meanwhile and this is a report on latest developments.

The track plan is now finished as far as the end of Phase 1 (the loco shed and platforms 1 - 3 as a fiddle yard) but not without the excellent help received from Martin Wynne, Templot creator. I struggled for a week or so to create a pair of curved tandem (3 way) turnouts and eventually had to turn to Martin for help. The result is on the Templot forum and now integrated into the overall layout plan.

As mentioned in an earlier blog, the idea for Brighton came about after Scalefour North this year when watching Robin Whittle and the Glevum group's Bristol Barrow Road layout, including the novel approach (in my books at least) to baseboard construction. Following that blog, Chris Yates (who built the boards) has offered some very useful advice which I have followed as far as possible.

Board 1 is the largest board on the layout. The curved nature of the West Coast platforms and the straight nature of the eastern side of the loco shed means that the baseboards are going to be somewhat irregular at some stage. The other issue with so much trackwork is where to break the track across board joints. Plain track is not an issue but on boards with so much pointwork, the consideration is to ensure that breaks don't cut through switches or crossings, but less obvious is not to have a board break near to a switch where a point motor might be fouled by the baseboard supports.

I decided (I hope that time does not prove me wrong), that the way that Chris' boards are designed, all sorts of irregularities can be built into the shape of the board whilst preserving the necessary rigidity. You can see this in the photo. Alongside the larger board is the curved board containing platforms 1 and 2 and the buffer stop end of the west sidings. The Templot templates are only temporary and in place as guides for where to cut the board top and thus position the side members. They will be taken off the board when laying the trackwork so I don't care about them curling up at this stage.

I have spent quite a lot of time perusing as many photos as I could find (thank you Google!) and this exercise threw up a lot of surprises. Firstly, the West Coast branch starts a 20 mile down gradient at 1 in 269 half way along the platform! Secondly, the whole loco shed trackwork is far from flat. The in road to the turntable is a foot and a half lower than the exit road. Three of the main roads from the sheds are progressively lower than the next by an appreciable amount.

This is not a problem for these first two boards, but provision will need to be made in later boards.

In the next blog, I will show you how I constructed this first board and lessons learnt for subsequent boards.

Best regards

Tony Hagon