I created a thread recently about whether I was cut out for modelling. After some very valuable responses, I think I know what my problem is. And that is that everything is a mess, from my plans to my modelling room.

I am quite lucky that I have a spare room I can use for my modelling. However, it is a tip. I keep meaning to sort it out but there never seems to be the time or money. And I've had various ideas about how to tidy it up and how to sort out some baseboards.

At first, I thought about using 8no. 800mm wide IKEA 'Billy' white bookcases (??20 each), around the edge of the room, and then putting the baseboards on top. The problem is that the bookcases are less than a foot wide, so some extra 'building on' would be needed to give me a decent baseboard width.

Then I considered using their 'Faktum' kitchen carcases. These have an open top, so I can just add my baseboard on the top, but they are almost 600mm wide. Putting these around the perimeter of the room would leave very little space in the middle of the floor.

Then I thought about maybe making my own units. Now I am useless at woodwork, but if I can get the panels cut square (and I have a builder's merchant at the bottom of the road), I'm sure I can glue & screw them together.

A bit of a play around in Sketchup came up with this plan:

It has two sides (obviously), a plinth at the base, two internal shelves and a baseboard on top. Still 800mm wide, but 450mm deep and 1m high.

A bit like this:

The two lines around the inside are where the shelves will be, and then I can fix 2"x1" across the top and fix the last piece onto that as a baseboard surface. A sheet of 18mm chipboard is about ??10, some hardboard for the back and a big box of fixings is pretty cheap, so I'm sure this is a much more viable option (financially) than buying flat-pack bookcases and then extra for baseboards on top.

And what about my modelling plans? Well, I will be sorting out my 4mm Light Railway terminus for the 2010 Challenge, which is about 6' long and built with a couple of very strong cardboard fruit boxes as the baseboard. There will also be a small US 'N'-gauge Inglenook.

But I've decided that the main layout, the one that will need all those shelves and baseboards, is going to be SR (SE Division) 3rd rail, 'OO' gauge using the Bachmann 4-CEP and upcoming 2-EPB and the recently announced Hornby 4-VEP. It'll probably be somewhere in Kent or SE London (not sure on that bit yet!), and with these models being the basis of the fleet, it'll be set firmly in the BR banger blue/BR blue & grey era.