Hi,

We have continued to make good progress with the scenic work and since the last blog entry have managed to fit in two working sessions.

06/06/2013

After our work last time on the final curved board, we now had the remaining two straight boards to build terrain on. As these two boards lead into our curved loops, then it's necessary for us to try and blend out the terrain on the scenic boards and match it to the end loops as seamlessly as possible. Again we were using our now tried and tested scenic methods, so extruded foam high points, packed in between with paper, then a covering of mesh prodded into an interesting shape and finally a covering of plaster bandage.

Here are some pictures:

The finished terrain on the board which will be furthest to the left. You can also see one of the timber profiles we have been cutting to provide protection for the scenic's and to ensure they mate correctly when the boards are erected.

The same board again but looking to the joint with the curved board. There is no timber profile here as the terrain comes down to board level, possibly to provide an access track for a signal box for the main running lines or line maintenance.

A look at the board which is furthest to the right. Here you can see both timber profiles, and the blocks of extruded foam, which have been glued to the board surface. We have used a surform file to round some of the edges of the blocks and when we fill in between the blocks, this should give us some nice rolling terrain.

08/06/2013

As today was a YAG DCC meeting, we were able to spend practically the whole day working on the boards and decided that the best use of our time, was to tackle the front and rear board fascias. Not a job I had been particularly looking forward to, as to be honest my woodworking skills haven't really progressed much past the heights of secondary school. However, there was a good turn out from our build team and between us and advice from others more skilled in the black arts, we made a start.

Our plan was to install a rear fascia for the layout which would be 5" high and a front fascia that would be a maximum of 6 1/2" high and would be profiled to follow the terrain on the boards. We started on the centre board, making sure it was nice and level, then we measured up and installed both the front and rear fascias. Once they had been secured, we carefully squared up the ends to ensure that when the boards are brought together, we don't have any gaps in the fascia and vice cersa, to make sure that the fascias didn't create any gaps in the board surfaces.

We decided to work on the rear fascia first as this would be the easiest to fit and we had noticed from fitting the front fascia on the centre board that we needed to tidy up around some of the scenic work as we had small amounts of mesh and plaster bandage on the edges of the baseboards that were preventing the fascias from fitting square. So using the centre board as a datum, we gradually added board after board, each time making sure that the fascia was nice and square where the boards would meet. We also made sure that in relation to the boards the fascia sat horizontally square. This is very important to us as, while we have been adding all the terrain, we have been losing our ability to tell if the boards are level when erected. We can now use the rear fascia as a guide for left / right level and by holding a level to the underside of the board ends we can tell front / back level.

Here are some pictures:

Centre board with front and rear fascias fitted.

A shot showing the height of the rear fascia from the board surface. We chose to have the height at 35mm because we have stock running close to the outside of the board and we didn't want to have any chance of it being knocked off the layout or damaged accidentally when somebody was leaning across. If we find this is too high, then as my Granddad says "You can always cut it off, but you can't always cut it back on"

Cheers, Mark.