I have managed a start on my good lady Grace's 8ft by 4ft layout using a LTM Layout Lift to store it suspended from the ceiling in our small guest room.

The lift was installed as per the instructions

The layout base would have to be made as light as posible and was made from one sheet of 9mm ply for the framework and one sheet of 6mm as a top to hold two sheets of 50mm styro foam.

I began by cutting the 9mm ply sheet into 8 110mmm strips to form the sides; each strip doubled up to 18mm. I also cut 50mm strips to form the cross members and as edge support to hold the 6mm base sheet in place my cordless rip saw made life a lot easier

As seen above I soon discovered the ply strips took on a life of their own when glued together, by clamping the strips to a piece of 75x50 length of CLS helped solve this warping

The frame was assembled using screws and glue and each corner had a 75x50x50mm block to add strengh

I drilled holes in the cross bracing for the wiring before trimming and fitting the 6mm sheet of ply the result was a reasonable frame to fit the foam into.

Now at this stage the frame was taken indoors and I had a well deserved cup of tea after which the hard job of clearing up began where did all these tools come from

the layout base in place

Parked out of the way

The next stage is for Grace to make a fabric cover which will be made to hide the under side of the layout which will be fastened by velcro and of course to plan her layout now she has sizes to go by.

I must confess that I should have just went for 19mm or 22mm ply which would have saved the glueing stage also I used a birch ply which I was advised was lighter but in future I will be using marine ply a far better quality product but we all live and learn

I will update this blog as things happen