For the lengths of wood under the surface of the baseboard, we had salvaged some of the wood that was on the previous baseboard but the majority of it had to be thrown away. We still had a few lengths of wood though so we cut some more to size. Some of the holes in the previous wood lengths we used were countersunk and others weren't so I decided to countersink them. After this was done, we screwed them all into place under the board and carefully lowered it onto the floor. We then set up the trestles and we both lifted the newly completed baseboard onto them.

I had around 6 straights, 5 double straights, 2 short straights, 10 points (5 left handed and 5 right handed) and a lot of curves, all of which is Hornby. I thought I had plenty of track for what I needed to do but if I needed more of a certain type of track size, I would buy some.

I decided to plan what the track plan would look like so I thought of some ideas. I wanted a roundy-roundy so I could sit back and just watch the trains pass by, but upon testing a circle of track, it overhung the baseboard so that was a no.

The next idea was to have a U shaped track plan. One end of the layout would have the scenic area with a station and the other end would have a fiddle yard. I thought about adding a couple of sidings on the scenic section. The two would be joined by a curve which would have to have small or medium radius track. I then thought about how trains would operate on the layout. I initially thought about an "in and out" using DMUs, railcars, loco + autocoach etc but I realized that if I was running with, for instance, a steam locomotive with mark 1 coaches, it would need to run round the train. So the plan needed to have a run round at the station area. The headshunt would have to be long enough to accommodate a tender loco such as my Flying Scotsman. With that in mind, I then got to work and experimented with the various bits of track arranging it in different ways. After about half an hour, I had a plan more or less sorted. It had a run round with a headshunt, two sidings and two sidings for the fiddle yard. It wasn't pinned down on the board if I wanted change a few things when I thought of it. 

However, the headshunt wasn't as long as I wanted it to be. It would fit my Ivatt tank with a bit of room to spare but my 2P 4-4-0's tender would be on the point that I'd need to change in order for the loco to run round. So I decided that I wouldn't run anything larger that a Standard 4MT 2-6-4T on it as it wouldn't be able to run round the train.