The design of Legge Lane II was set a long time ago (nearly a year it seems). The design was dictated by a number of factors, including space available, location of space (in living room in a small apartment) and the need for storage to contain large Gauge O boxes, tools, etc.

Having built two IKEA kitchens in the last 6 years and added several built in cupboards, the approach was a no-brainer. IKEA offer an on line design app and this together with SketchUp provided an excellent mating up of storage cabinets below and layout above. The design concept looked like this. It hasn't changed very much since.

Buying the cabinets was no problem - drive to Montpellier, buy and collect. Except the trim for surrounding the layout was not kept in stock and had to be delivered! Two pieces of trim cost €36. Shipping would be €96.00!!!!!! I put the whole plan out of my mind. By the way, the two pieces of trim in IKEA UK would be £62.00, approximately double the cost in France. What is going on, IKEA?

The trim has two purposes. First to finish off the boundary between furniture below and scenic layout above. Second to act as a barrier to runaway locomotives falling off a scale cliff. Such things can happen.

Finally, I found myself in Montpellier last week and stopped at IKEA to order the trim pieces. To be told that they were now in stock! I snapped them up and drove back with two cardboard packed strips sticking out the window, hoping it would not start raining. It didn't.

I don't know about others, but I find mitred joints a real pain. Picture framers must be a special breed! Measure twice cut once took on a new meaning at this stage. The good news was that the boards were square so 90º is truly 90º. Or at least nearly 90º!

The strips are 2.2 meters long while the layout is 2.4 meters long. So there has to be a join and I have elected to put it half way, above a join between two cabinet doors. This is not the strongest point to make the join but it will look "right" and the layout isn't exactly going anywhere just yet. Incidentally, should I decide to move from the apartment the task of removing the layout and putting a new work surface on top of the cabinets will be reasonably straightforward - all part of the master plan!

So what does it look like?

The brackets will disappear under scenery, in fact the inside "wall" of the trim will be part of the layout scenery.