I thought a lot about how to tackle the baseboard. As I have no plans to exhibit this, I decided for as simple and robust a baseboard as possible, accepting that in the event of moving house all will likely be lost.

Weight is no object as the shelving can carry 300 kg per unit; nonetheless I wanted something I could easily assemble alone. I shall not need to lift the baseboards—there will be no electrical wiring to tracks or turnouts, and any to buildings will be buried in the ground cover. I wanted to have some ups and downs, rather than a completely flat layout; this meant having the track a few inches above the lowest point in the scenery.

I decided to go with a layered approach which in fact would work well for a portable baseboard. I bought a number of 25 mm thick sheets of craft foam 1200 × 600 mm in size which I stacked on top of each other, staggering their joints.

First sheets of craft foam laid down. I used carpet tape to tack them to the chipboard shelving, really to stop them moving around. The craft foam is about ½" narrower than the shelves, and the shelves are not quite flush with the back scene, so there will be a small horizontal gap to the “sky”, which is not such a bad thing. There’s also the vertical gap, ahem...

The thickest layering, underneath the fiddle yard area. This view also reveals the cutaway for the fiddle-yard turntable, of which more elsewhere. The station (on the far side) will be on three sheets; the fiddle yard on six (glue for the top layer is visible here), hence there will be a sharp little gradient on the tight curve out of the station and up to the fiddle yard.

Holding down the ply surface upon which the fiddle-yard turntable will be mounted.

The craft foam base approaching the end of the scenery, with the hole in the “sky” leading to the fiddle yard. Here the flexiply has had to cover a roof beam and the back scene is lower, so I had to cut the craft foam to fit into the rounded corners. A simple hot-wire cutter from eBay made light work of this.

I protected the craft foam while I painted the back scene; here the first coat of primer is going on.

Note that the baseboards are not longitudinally flush: I left gaps in order to stretch out to the full length. This will not materially weaken anything.

Building up the rock cutting behind which the track curves before passing to the fiddle yard; the backscene has done a reasonable job of de-emphasising the roof beam and it will not be possible to crane around the rock to see the hole in the backdrop. The mine will fill the low flat area in the foreground. The white material on the trackbed is a 4% “riser”, which is a pre-formed gradient designed for HO-scale use; I use two side-by-side. They rise 1" in 25" and are thus a doddle to use with 1" deep craft foam sheets.

The strata of the hillside are temporarily being held in place with long steel pins while the glue dries.

The cutting and the climbing gradient; the mine track is to the far left.