One of the negatives about portable layouts is the fact that they come in separate boards which must be joined and unjoined from time to time. Damage to the ends of the boards is easy to do during transportation as well, so this problem is both practical and aesthetic.

Legge Lane consists of two small baseboards, 93 cm by 40 cm. They easily fit into the boot of my car so have been transported between France and England and are due to be taken back to France later this year. While in England I have been trying various things out as well as rebuilding the turntable. This is a report on my experiments with the baseboard join.

The framework of the baseboards is built from very stable hard wood (a light colored wood from Thailand that is often used for furniture making and was part of a futon bought in Texas that became surplus to requirements a few years ago. The two boards bolt together and become "as one" with virtually no problems registering the track across the "gap". I originally laid the Peco code 75 track across the join and then cut the rails with my Dremel. But now the track on the turntable side has been removed, leaving me with the following scene:

The photo shows the join and the beginnings of some scenic tests with black "cinders". But I have also had the idea of masking the join with a sleeper-built crossing aligned next to the edge of one board. The sleepers come from a bag of sugar pine HO sleepers I bought in Canada a few years ago.

The next photo shows a vertical bird's eye view of the join:

This shows my approach to tying down the ends of the rails as they are extremely vulnerable during transportation. This is accomplished by drilling 2mm holes deep into the baseboard and frame below and gluing a length of 2mm copper rod I just happen have had had in my modeling junk box for about 50 years! The top of the rod is then trimmed to be the right height to touch the nickel silver rails. Careful application of flux and solder and the track is bonded to the baseboard.

While I was doing this I also started to add sleepers for the boardwalk:

The gap is still visible from one side, but effectively masked when looked at from the other side. The most important result is that the eye is taken away from the gap and focuses on the boards.

I then started on track laying on the first engine shed road. This shows how the tracks are pinned down. The next photo shows two copper rods inserted into the baseboard and trimmed to the correct height. The rod used is also shown.

Next the track between edge and turntable was trimmed to fit and pinned down before the two copper anchors were soldered to the rails:

By this time I had also painted some of the sleepers. The complete engine shed road is now in place and that is as far as I got this weekend:

(A couple of comments. The cinders are medium size from Woodland Scenics. I think fine size would be much better. It looks more like coal than cinders at the moment. I will also mix some regular dark ballast in with the cinders and make the ground surface a lot less uniform. Also, when I tested a locomotive on the turntable I found one of the springs connecting the supply to the bridge rails was stuck and therefore not making contact with the rail above.)