The next task was to cut an entry hole from the fiddle yard.
I don't know if you are like me, but I find it a bit daunting cutting holes in or otherwise modifiying (and therefore potentially ruining) any expensive and lovely model. This is why, even though I was pleased with my weathering on some wagons, I haven't yet built up the courage to tackle a locomotive yet.
I mean, I know most things that go wrong can be sorted with a bit of work, but there is a feeling that it might all go horribly wrong. And in this case it sort of did, but, as I said, even a wobble can get fixed and I was happy with the result.
Anyway, the baseboard may be a lovely but of craftsmanship, but it's not much use without access to the fiddleyard, so off we go.
Firstly, I cut out a cardboard arch to get an idea of the size, and drew round it onto the end of the layout - making sure it was dead in the center of course.
I planned to use a big wood screw to cut the corners and then cut up with the electric jigsaw.
I worked out carefully out the centers so I could drill the hole in the right place and thus I would get a nice neat hole (well, that was the plan).
The wood drill did try to drift a bit as the blade parts stareted to cut but it was was fairly cooperative and I was quite happy.
However this miscreant, whether because it's a cheap nasty or because I haven't used it more than twice ever, decided not to cooperate.
What a mess! All of poor Tim's hard work buidling this thing and I go and do this outrage to it! The shame!
Anyway these guys came to the rescue.
After a bit of work tidying up, it's now looking at least presentable. In actual fact it will be hidden, but I do want it to be at least presentable.
While I was testing the size, I used the Peco track on top of a spacer to repsent the track height - with the foresight of using a length with a buffer stop to make sure it didn't run off the end. I wouldn't necessarily be able to put it right if it smashed into a thousand pieces, I guess incidents of that nature are why modellers so often have grounded bodies as stores etc on their layouts.
I originally wanted to build a photo/shunting plank, if you've seen "Jinty's" YouTube video (such as the 08 sound decoder demo) you'll have seen how fantastic a straight piece of track can look with sympathetic scenery. Well, I thought I'd better put a couple of points on the track so at least the trains can shunt about a bit. Something like this:
But then I thought if I'm going to bother doing that, if I put two more points in, I get an actual "station" with run round loop and two sidings. So I came up with a layout that would fit the baseboards, with about 3 wagons on the left hand siding, four on the right, and a loop that can fit 4 and a brake van.
The first thing I did after the delivery of the baseboards was to lay out some Peco track on the templot track plan and some stock to see how it looks.
The first thing I didn't like was the siding in front of the run round loop release on the far right. I don't know why, but when the loco was behind the stock, it just looked wrong. So I think I'll change the crossover direction so the loco release is towards the front, and the siding is behind. Not really typical, but not really a howler either. This also means I can extend the left hand siding.
(I won't keep the end dock from that picture as that's not really how they would work).
Some of you may have heard of Tim Horn, well it turns out as well as a skilled craftsman, he's also a lovely chap (with a lovely dog, Arnie who came along too).
Tim kindly agreed to put together and deliver the baseboards. They are very nicely put together, probably twice as good, done three times more quickly than I could do.
One thing I hadn't quite twigged is that even a small baseboard in 7mm, if it has the facia and backscene is actually a huge item!
Well, actually two items as that's only half of it. Plus the turntable.
This is now the second largest item in the house after the couch, I think. Maybe microlayout is a bit of a stretch...
This is a bit of a repeat of my post (see below) but I wanted to include this step in my journey in the blog, too. At this point I want to have sound only my layout so I got an NCE powercab, which should be okay for low speed running in O Gauge, but I needed to fit sound in the Dapol 08 which I already had.
There are a lot of options out there, but I really liked the Paul Chetter sound file that as demonstrated on one of "Jinty's" YouTube videos (actually the whole thing just oozes atmosphere - so inspirational for such a simple photo plank!
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Fortunately for me, Jeremy from Digitrains was very helpful and not only checked my shopping list for me, but he even soldered the whole thing up as part of the order (that's particularly helpful for a totally untried DCC system as if it didn't work I wouldn't know where to start looking for problems).
This was MS440C Zimo Maxi decoder, the speaker, soundfile and stay alive capacitor, and it just popped into place and ran with no issues at all.
It really does sound as great as I hoped and I'm really pleased with it.
