Today I visited IKEA in Montpellier and came away with three 800mm x 600mm base units. By 6 p.m. they were installed, providing a base for a largish diorama shed layout (Legge Lane II) as well as copious storage below. These are the new IKEA kitchen cabinets which provide a larger storage space than before.

The central unit will support a 70 ft turntable, so I placed two sheets of hardboard with a 600m gap to simulate the space the turntable will fit:

This photo shows the larger context:

This is all rather lifeless, so I put the Jinty in its present form, together with a Dapol wagon, to show the scale:

It seems I may be able to have four roads either side of the turntable, honouring a 6ft minimum radius. We will see if this works when I start serious layout design. At moment I am assuming only three. Four roads would simply justify spending more money and time on building locomotives!

The doors for the cabinets are back ordered, a particular annoyance as I live over 100km from Montpellier, but the delivery charge would be higher than collecting them myself. I did try sourcing the cabinets locally but the various options simply didn't match IKEA for versatility or price. Having built three IKEA kitchen in recent years I have to admit they are excellent value with great backup when things don't quite go right!