Baseboards

All the boards on Calshot have been made using the open-frame format, where a ply upriser is sandwiched between planks of pine. Polystyrene is then cut to shape to form the contours of the land and cut to fit between the uprisers. This method requires slightly more thought than the more usual method of pinning track straight to a board and is much more versatile because you can cut holes in the uprisers for wiring looms and it also means hills are much easier to landscape because less material is needed to form the hills as the uprisers are cut out to the contours of the land so you don't need layers upon layers of polystyrene blocks. It is a cheap and more aesthetical method of creating baseboards.

Track

The track on Calshot is a mixture of PECO and Hornby. Most of the points are PECO and indeed, most of the other trackwork is. The fiddle yard and the rear standard gauge siding (nearest the hangar) are Hornby offerings as it just happened to be what I had to hand when track-laying.

The narrow gauge is PECO N gauge track including the point and the dual gauge turnout is from International Models.

Scenery

After track laying had finished, the whole layout was covered in a Polyfilla filler mix including the sea. This was smoothed before setting and left to dry. The sea was painted in a Peugeot colour that was originally going to be used for a car of the same make, however it was lightened with the help of some white paint before the alternating layers of 'Scenic Water' and PVA glue was applied.

Grass is simple hanging basket liner cut off the mat in long strips and glued backing up and left to dry before the backing being pulled off and the grass trimmed to represent overgrown areas. The hard standing is again more filler. This being scored with a craft knife to represent slabs and sprayed with 'Plastikot Suede Tan' to represent concrete.

Structures

There are various structures on the layout, where proprietary buildings were used, they have been modified to try and shield their origins. For example, the Cafe was once a Will's Waiting Shelter. Modifications included cutting the internal wall out, cutting off the gable on that wall and re-gluing it on the front of the building. The building was given a wash of white and cream paint and the word 'Cafe' scrawled onto the roof.

Another building was the hangar. This was scratchbuilt from Wills Corrugated Asbestos sheets in a night with a roof simply made from white card. The hangar door (which at some stage I will probably replace) is just a bit of standard A3 paper cut up and folded! This was built from the prototype at Calshot and is based upon a Belfast Lattice Trust hangar.

The loco shed was another scratchbuilt building, the walls were made from Wills Flemish Bond bricks with holes cut out for the window and extension. The window surrounds were Wills Brick Arch Overlays, and the roof was formed from Slaters corrugated plasticard cut into prototypical size sheets. The rooflight is Wills Corrugated Clear Glazing and if you look through the rooflight, you can see the three roof trusses (made from matchsticks) that I built.

Finally, the lifeboat station is yet more scratchbuilding with Wills sheets (Wills Cement Blocks painted to look like stone) and the Castle (which is based upon a smaller version of the real Calshot Castle) was formed from layers of polystyrene with windows cut out at intervals. It was then covered in polycell to give it a smooth finish, and scribed to represent stone blocks.