Dr.Glum

Update since April 22nd. I’ve continued to lay temporary track to check that my plans are feasible. The corner shown below will have the four tracks in tunnels. I had to make up Scalescenes tunnel mouths to find my minimum spacing. The other tunnel mouths will be roughly at the RH edge of the picture. (I wish I’d remembered to apply the darkening option when I printed the sheets: my stonework looks like it was built yesterday and no smoky trains been near it.) In the following image you can see the temporary ledge on the end of the baseboard. The grey board with 4 tracks on it (on the settee, lower right) sits on this and spans across the doorway to the garden, giving me about 6 feet extra run, for now. I have yet to build the permanent wedge shaped board that’ll bolt on to the face you can see. The railway arches (above) are a scenic module from off the old layout. I’m thinking about how they (and others) can be used on this one, but not where you see now. The next view is taken from the ‘previous’ corner. The sidings won’t necessarily be like that. I allow minimum radius 24 inches in goods sidings where space is squeezed. About ten days ago I was stood looking at the layout late one evening, musing with a drink in hand, and rather than just plan to progress the build on the end that I had reached, I was suddenly taken with the urge to tackle the difficult bit at the other end of the layout. I had to have a lift-out section spanning a 1.5m gap for 4 tracks and a spur off leading into the house. I started next day. I’ve documented it in a separate post: For now, here’s a view of it awaiting final fettling so that the edge walling will fit vertically, before track laying begins.

Hello ColinK, Glad you find it useful. Beware of one thing I found a few years back (and posted about in 2010 or 2011) when building scenery modules out of foamboard and greyboard: direct hot sunlight will make an unsupported piece of black foamboard bend like a banana and the warping is usually permanent. So it has to be sprayed or painted or covered and definitely braced at short intervals. I won't shout that this board of mine is a 100% proven success until its had a couple of years in use. But I am confident.

In the next picture I’ve done a lot more work with the internal foam structure and am checking the crucial fits and clearance. There are three: the correct angle to the next (fixed, No.1) board, the side clearance of the spur (RHS of the part running towards the camera) to the open door, and (to the left, out of shot) clearance along the ‘next’ wall. All three were important, but the last had to be minimum clearance with just a bit of tolerance, because of the geometry of the next board it will hang off, a 90deg corner which will rely on exactly the minimum 30 inch radius. In the view above the board is now resting on stands at the right height. I had to break off to make those because my tolerances are so tight I could only finalise if the board was level. Note the top surface sheets lying on the floor. The next image concentrates on the end that joins the main board of the layout. I am apprehensive of my ability to glue down track (white PVA) and have it end up where it exactly needs to be. I can’t expect pins in foamboard to work against forces in curved flexitrack so I decided (despite the lot of extra work) to install a wood plate at this butt joint. I cannot cut lots of foamboard and expect my accuracy to prove out at better than half a millimetre. So shimming is called for and the photo was taken while I did the tedious business of getting the plate level with Board 1 and plane with the foamboard surface when it’s laid on. Ug! But it’s done. Finally, the image below shows the board ready for the two top surface sheets to be glued on. All in it weighs a little over 4 pounds (2Kg) and is very strong. It’ll weigh more once the track is on (and the greyboard mentioned below) and the centre of weight may shift from its present position that is an inch to the left of the RH hand hole. Now all (all? Hah!) I have to do is fettle so that top and bottom sheets exactly match, lay and wire up the track, finish cutting the 2mm greyboard strips (70mm wide) that will be glued onto the sides with 15mm of ‘wall’ protruding above the top surface, and glue on the brick paper and coping top.

For the 00 layout I’m building around my conservatory I needed to bridge a gap of approximately 1.5m with a lift out section. The layout history and general progress is in The board has to carry four running tracks curving something less than 90 degrees across a doorway, plus a spur on the outer-most track to provide a link to temporary boards in the adjacent room. In the shot below I am working on the two sheets of 5mm foamboard that fit between the fixed point on the layout (upper right of RH sheet) and run along the wall of the conservatory with suitable clearance (left lower edge of LH sheet). I am using paper templates to determine where the tracks will lie to a) fit the geometry and b) not be less than my minimum radius of 30 inches. (While I was still working and had access to CAD and a plotter, I produced a series of sheets with curves that would fit on the inside of curves against the sleeper ends of Peco track and give nominal radii in 1 inch steps from 24 to 48, plus a few up to 80 inches. Rolled storage for more than 10 years has made it difficult to get rid of the curl on some of them.) In the next view I am determining where the two 45mm timbers will lie to form a ‘skeleton’ or ‘spine’ for the board. Once I was sure, I cut and shaped the ends, and cut notches in the ends where they will rest on ledges of the fixed layout or free-standing stands. The timber was glued to the foamboard with Evostik impact adhesive. Once it had stood overnight, I put two screws into the joint. The next image shows progress with adding the foam pieces to form a box structure using white PVA wood glue. (The board is a hybrid box girder with the stiffening spine to give stability to the foam and to give something to get hold of. Luckily before I got too far with adding crosspieces I realised I needed to continue my ring main along the board and also down the spur. Doh! I tested the (old) pieces of cable for continuity: it would involve surgery to replace a problem segment; I’d probable run copper tape along the underside instead. Note the hand hold cut-out (just above the soldering iron) so that I’ve got somewhere to hold onto once the board is all boxed. (There is a second one out of shot, left). I also cut access holes so I can insert wires into choc blocks and use a screwdriver from below. The board has to be built and the track laid before the feed wires can be soldered to the rails and connected up. There will be 12 feed wires to deal with. The big question – will it fit? Well I’d checked as I went along and yes, it does fit. This day was the first rough placement, so ignore the levelling. It is balanced on a stand that’s made for a different location.

This thread is 'Things that make you laugh', so references to Rhoose Airport make me laugh in a way that sounds really disturbing to anyone listening as it was the scene of the greatest escape of my life from the imminent danger of getting lured into marriage. While I was a naive student, my parents and me went to stay in Bridgend with old family friends, in about 1968. And their daughter. "Why don't you and Cheryl borrow the car and go for a meal at the restaurant at the airport?" I was quite taken with the idea of acting like adults (shows what my self image was like!) so it was all planned and we got all dressed up smart (very short mini dress for her, suit for me) and went. Evening: it wasn't very busy. The Waitress was Welsh chatty and said, "Ah luvly, look at you two, are you off on your honeymoon?" Such a big laugh (play soundtrack doom and dread mucic.) I was oblivious to all this. After the meal we sat in the car in the very dark car park on the bench seat of my Dad's Renault 1100 and talked, swapping amusing student tales, until I said it's getting late we'd better get back. Off we drive. Back at the house she disappeared upstairs in a flash, while I explained to her mother what a Nice Time we'd had. Things seemed a little odd, but at the time I thought nothing of it. Next morning at breakfast I enquired where Cheryl was, and was told "we've called for the doctor, she's paralysed and can't get out of bed". Mmm? Cut a long story short, her Mum had hatched up this plan that I'd get carried away with the romance of the evening and take advantage (however slightly) in the dark car park and have to get engaged to be married. Nowhere was that on my horizon at that stage of my life. The disappointment then affected Cheryl's physical state. I never discovered to what extent my own mother was complicit, although she had made noises about grandchildren. Over the years I stayed in touch, Cheryl had all sorts of marital and emotional problems and I really dodged a bullet, by being a straightforward mate with a girl on that night. And so you'll understand why I laugh in a funny way when Rhoose airport is mentioned.

Finished Board 5 (on right) clamped to Board 6 as a trial. I separated them, attended to proud screw heads on Board 6, back together and, joy, the surfaces form a plane. Because all my timber is 9mm nominal, the two boards weigh about the same. After bolting them together, I lifted them into position with the help of a friend. This morning I've levelled them with shims, drilled bolt holes between 5 and 4 and locked it in place. I can now extend some temporary track round the corner. So my mistake with dimension of Board 6 has actually improved what is possible in this area, with a bit more space for the end of the goods yard in front. I'm aware it's quite a reach to the far corner, but most of the curves can be laid next time the boards are down. The scenic stuff and colliery tracks will be on top of the tunnels made as a removable layer so I'll be able to get at all sides of that. Build it, and then plonk it in place. Once I know where the ground level track curves will be, I shall make access holes in the board surface so I can reach up through and deal with any (unlikely) derailments or collisions (more likely) in the tunnels.

A friend helped me offer up the next (last) board supplied by Tim Horn. It didn't fit. Some numpty had specified the length to exactly fill the space to the window glass, instead of that length minus the 6cm allowance. I am an idiot. However, I started looking at how it would be if the board was applied the other way round. There's no real reason why the layout this side of the room has to be the absolute minimum footprint. So I've trialled it rotated by 90 degrees. The extra area has led to all sorts of interesting changes to my thinking of how the tracks will lie. More of that anon. I spent a long time measuring and discovering the geometry of the gap. It turns out that the board 4 (on the right above) is not parallel to the end windows by a small amount, but I can't change that as it is governed by position constraints on all the other boards bolted together. So that gap filler is to be slightly irregular as I do want the sections down the left windows to be parallel to the windows. In the end I decided I wanted to build it myself, mainly because if necessary I could change the design as I progressed. No, mainly because I was too impatient. I was trying to find the same ply that Tom Horn uses, and failed. But I did find a local builders merchants that had in stock 9mm marine ply (that over the years I read so much about). My sheet 2400mm x 1225mm x 9mm cost me £54.26 plus £2.40 to clean cut it into three section so I could get it into the car. It's a lot for one bit of wood, but it's fair value as it should be enough for the rest of the layout. For the life of me I cannot keep to a line with an electric saw, so it took me most of a day to manually saw all the pieces for Board 5. I had to rest between sessions to prevent a terrible knotting behind my right shoulder. So I've created the kit of parts (nearly all shown above). Let mayhem and gluing and screwing and cursing and bodging ensue! I numbered everything, and tried to mark which were the gluing areas on the parts, so how come I so often stuck things on upsidedown, or failed to see the block wasn't lined up correctly, or other stupid mistakes? I do despair sometimes. 🤪 Nearly finished, below. If all my edges were perfect like Tim Horn's laser cut ones, I could have used wood glue. I used the equivalent of Evostick. Then 20mm screws. It's finished now and I recovered from all the bodges and it's strong and I'm pleased. 😄

For a bit of fun when a friend was coming round for a look, I dug out and put together this small bit of scenery from the old layout. The buildings are detachable and may find a home on this layout, but not on this triangular base. The lights all worked except the one in the phone box (hardly visible behind the right hand bus), which may not have been connected.

Time to strip another of the old boards. I'm particularly after the double cross-over which I hoped to re-use to link the outer loop with the outer main on Board 4. For operating flexibility there will be three places around the room where it is/will be possible to change between loop and main. Because I had found hacking standard Peco points and crossing led to a non-symmetrical result (or at least with the amount of cutting I was prepared to attempt 15 years ago) this will be the only example of both inwards and outwards at the same place. The next shot show how I have traced the rails of the junction and then found the positions of all the droppers that are soldered on. There are so many because the junction is fully switched for the two routes A and B across, as this was the only way I could get good slow running with even the shortest wheelbase (well, I didn't own a 0-4-0 then) and also avoid some locos shorting sometimes. Choose A, and all B rails are dead, including an approach length and vice versa. [Below] I've eased up and removed all the track pins, and the two nearer points on the loop have come away because there were no rail joiners attaching them. Reason? Geometry made it impossible to put it together, even when isolating joiners flex. (I did not have derailments.) Finally I took advantage of the baseboard being white before it and the track were sprayed grey, so now I could line up the tracing, check its veracity and poke a biro end into the dropper holes to make an accurate mask for when I lay the track again. "Why bother with all this namby-pamby arty-farty tracing business?", I hear you ask. Well when I lay this on the new layout I want to keep the dropper holes as small as possible, and avoid new droppers at all costs. Soldering on some of them was a nightmare in the confined places on the crossing.

I used to have a 00 loft layout, about 24ft x 8ft and it suffered a large annual temperature range e.g. 0degC to 30-33degC, i.e. twice what you are suggesting. I soldered all joints (AFAIK) so there were some continuous runs of at least 20ft between points. I had read about expansion problems and worried about it, but then over 10 years I never had any evidence of a problem. Mind you, that was 00. Will that make a difference? I don't know. Points are good because the insulating rail joiners automatically make a break, and I used to be generous with the gap on some to get a clickety-clack. Good luck.

Been quite a lot of progress since late January. All three extension boards are operational and allow a bit of a run while the circuit round the room hasn't yet been built. I can remove the board that straddles the doorway if I want to shut the doors between sessions, but I've found to my cost that that removes the end-to-end stability. I sent one board flying by bumping into the end. Result: one knackered point motor that landed on the door frame. It's still definitely a worthwhile project. I've laid temporary track round onto boards 3 & 4, to get maximum run for playing. After I have a visit from an old school chum in five weeks time, I'll take everything down so that the ceiling can be insulated. Next

Thank you Sir BH, this was most useful. It has made my Lucknow with a Bachmann 36-557 (ESU LokPilot Standard) behave for the first time. To get graduated control starting and stopping I've set CV3 & 4 to 30 (after working up from default 16) and top speed cv5 set to 20 and cv6 to 10. Now I know the loco can run OK, I might tweak those a little further. It is noticeable how dependent mine is on the effectiveness (or otherwise) of the tender pickups. I've fettled the drivers, but think I will swap out the traction tyred ones. [One thing Bachmann are to be congratulated on: the two screws to release the tender top had been done up with reasonable torque (unlike the ridiculous force needed for some Heljan and Hornby offerings I've bought recently). Mind you, I couldn't find them to undo without looking for the leaflet, which I'd mislaid! Also the top came off and back on with no fuss - again, unlike some others I've recently dealt with.]

Next day I found that in a previous rebuild the end of the board had been built up, and by scraping it off, my rails were now long enough. Phew! Tracks were re-aligned, the board offered up, the electrics checked – no shorts. All OK, except no loco would run on the board. At least eight years of no running or cleaning had left a non-conductive patina on the nickel silver. (It then took a long time to clean it all with a glass fibre pencil.) While it was connected I thought, “I’ll try the point motors”. After all this time, I had to look up what the command was. I tried all three on that board – nothing. “Oh well, perhaps it was asking a lot for them to remember their addresses”. I was even willing to believe some of the electronics had failed. Durr! I had switched the track power off. (I didn’t install a separate bus for the points on the old layout and I’d never had a problem.) With the power on, blow me, they all remembered their addresses and they all worked. Next day, with cleaned track, I did some test running. The image below shows crossing from the new headshunt of the Outer Loop across to the Inner Main.

I have to be realistic and think it’s going to be months (at least) before I can run trains on complete circuits all around the room. So I looked again at the question of a temporary headshunt board to stand in the doorway and allow transfers between the four running lines, and the engine yard on the outside, and the goods sidings on the inside. While hunting in the shed for something, I contemplated the remaining boards from the old loft layout. A bit of doodling on paper showed that I could re-use at least two of them, making a straight run into the house. I brought two of them into the conservatory, see below. Both had sections of incline that were added during the big rebuild in 2006 to 2007; I had to now remove those. The boards are made as per my standard of the time, from contiboard shelving strengthed by a batten underneath. All the points were motorised so the boards are quite heavy. The next image shows all the gubbins of accessory decoders, CDUs and H&M point motors. One end will rest on the ledge of Board 1, but new supports are needed. I was concerned about stability; the baseboard top is 1.225m high (just over 4 feet). I raided the stored woodwork that used to support the loft layout and made this shown below. It is reasonably stable and a coat of grey or black will improve it. The next photo was taken while I was checking that track alignments were going to be feasible, and before I put blocks in to raise the end to datum. Although using an existing board was going to be a great time saver, there was still an amount of work. There was some redundant wiring to remove and checks that all rail sections had feeds, in case supply to any rails was from adjacent boards in the old layout. Here it is upsidedown. While sorting out to minor changes to the track alignments I was disturbed to find two rails were going to be too short i.e. leave too big a gap (although it always surprises me how large a gap stock will tolerate). I left the job overnight at that point.

Been busy even though the colder weather has made it a bit nippy in the conservatory, to say the least! (Must get on with speccing the insulation work.) Decided to revamp the cabling from the controller so that the programming track supply could be switched to the long siding at the back of layout Board 1, with the idea that it would be handy for programming mulitple units. Made it all, but (for now) a waste of time as the system cannot detect a response from the unit being programmed. Presumably the leads are too long/ too far away. Programming does still work on that short length of track that sits next to the controller. I have been raiding Dunelm for net curtains and rods so that I can have some privacy and remove the temporary sheets I hung up with sellotape. Another distraction was making legs from tubular ali. After considering all sorts of brackets, I made 'sockets' to be expoxied onto the leg end. The legs are cut slightly short and height adjustment is by card shims at the top. Socket shown is upside down. Next I looked ahead and did enough leg work to do a trial 'offering up' of Boards 3 and 4 (as 1 & 2 are now permanently joined). By today's date I have now laid all bar one short siding on Board 1 &2, so tonight I put a bit of stock on to get a feel of how it will look. Lots of work to do yet, filling in sleepers, a few more droppers, etc.

The turntable turned into a bit of a nightmare, mainly due to the main shaft not being absolutely straight. To cut a long story short, the red box holding the worm gear now floats unattached to the underside of the baseboard, free apart from the vertical shaft being glued into the underside of the turntable deck using PVA. (Initially I used Loctite but it never set: magically the turntable would rotate clockwise, but if you wound the handle the other way, the deck stayed put. Ha!) Anyway it works now. Both ways. Track planning and track laying continues. The last points and wiring are done on Board 1. Track that continues onto Board 2 will be laid once the two boards are up and joined. The photo below shows them clamped together so that I can mark the bolt holes underneath. I have continued to tweak the track alignments because I plan to have the four running tracks meet the far edge of Board 2 at right angles to the edge. The rail joints there will be of unsoldered rail joiners, so that if necessary the layout can be split at that point in future. I can't manage the first two boards when they're joined together, but I could with a helper. After much fiddling, I appear to have found how to run an ash and coal siding next to the ash pits and the coal tower. The corner posts from the Ratio kit are at the correct spacing. And below, not so much fun as jiggling bits of track - varnish the bare wood of Boards 2 and 3. When dry, turn over and do the insides.

I writing this in case someone else does what I've done and ends up thinking they've fried the chip. The story has a happy ending. "This should be an easy install", thinks I. Is there such a thing? It's my first time with one of these Next21 chips. Just plug the chip in and program it. Ha! First thing to take the smile off my face was the force needed to remove the blanking plate. Then the force needed to get the chip to sit even half way down the pins. "That's enough for tonight, I'll test and program tomorrow." Tomorrow comes and it doesn't respond on the programming track. I may or may not have set cv1, so onto the layout and - nothing. Doesn't respond to address 3 or my 87. Lights are off. A test loco responds, so its not that. Hey ho, what have I damaged, I'll put the blanking plate back. Then I am worried because it doesn't work like it had on DC previously. I trawl through RMweb looking for inspiration, learning several useful things along the way, but no joy. I bought this chip in 2016 so it came in a little cardboard box with a folded up leaflet. I now looked at the leaflet and a diagram labelled "Fitting the decoder". All straight forward, but light dawned when I read underneath about sometimes fitting it the other way up. Had I checked last night which way up? I couldn't remember. When I put it in as per the sketch, far less force was needed, it worked, and was programmable. So I hadn't buggered anything. Lesson learned: take a photo of the inside of the loco before removing the blanking plate, because today I must also have refitted that upside down as well. Doh!Photo shows almost finished installation. Couple of loose bits to stick back on.

Just fitted a Gaugemaster DCC90 Ruby 2 function 8 pin decoder in the tender of a Hornby R3542 Q6 No.63427. Straight forward until I tried to get the tender top back on and then realised there is no clearance for the chip to sit over the elevated socket and the housing for a speaker. It looks like the designer intended that the chip sit on its edge in either of the two spaces beside the moulding for the coal space. But, and irony of ironies, considering the problems I had years back stuffing long folds of harness wiring inside while struggling to get loco bodies back on, this chip has a relatively short harness. So it wouldn't reach the empty space. Solution: either use a different make (not to hand) or different harness (can't find box of old kit) or if you're not bothered about running with a low coal load, use a slitting disk to remove enough plastic (my goodness but it's tough stuff) to create clearance under the supplied coal load. The picture shows the result; red chip to the right, socket out of sight to the left. I took the minimum off, so I can later ditch the supplied load and make a real coal supply of medium load. But another time, I'd have waited till I'd found the right harness. Tut tut.

Whoopee, it arrived! It took the edge off a bit to find the designer of the packaging needs a kick up the backside and the person who signed off his work didn't give it a good enough rattle test. See view below, before I unpacked the loco. It has rotated along its axis, loosing a front buffer and partially detaching the cab. The tender is disconnected but no harm apparently done. The loco runs fine, but I will have to extra careful dealing with the cab as it is still held at the front and wants to tip. Hey ho.

Once I can run trains again I'll look at my Pullmans which have NEM pocket factory fitted couplings. ikcdab said, "It's hauling them round a gently reverse curve (the exit from a loop on a curve). Somehow the couplings get caught up and don't return to the straight position." which is what mine might do, usually the one next to the engine = most drag from the train. I found that the slot in the hook of the coupling was an (almost) interference fit over the back edge of the loop. On curves the hooks move a slight amount (or should) but mine were apparently keeping the position induced by the curve which meant the bogie following was at a slight angle coming out. I was going to (somehow) slightly open the slots (and leaving a smooth edge else I'd introduce new reason for troubles) , but having read all the above I think instead I'll refit with better couplings. Many thanks.

I am 2/3rds of the way through the enjoyable task of building my first Tim Horn baseboard kit and have a query about the dowel sets. I've drawn a blank looking for info in videos. I think I know what to do, but can someone offer confirmation please? 1. Glue the small backing ply plate against the side panel. (Next time I'll clean away any squeezed out glue from the other joins while it's still liquid so that this plates sits flush. Harder to deal with now.) 2. Glue 1 of the round spacers into the hole to lessen the depth. 3. Screw either the female plate or the male prong onto the spacer (and do the same with the other sort onto the next board). Anything I've missed? (I note the price lists in Facebook are unavailable again - I wonder if this means Tim is too busy to accept new orders? I won't contact him until I need to - why interrupt him from making someone else's order?)

I will enjoy watching this layout grow. Your philosophy matches mine; let's watch the big trains go by! Unlike me you're icing your cake with scenics, but once I'd settled for using my conservatory the concept had to be four tracks all the way round. Keep up the good work.

I had been distracted by reading a long Topic about motorising the Peco turntable and the difficulties some people (not all) had with slack in the drive system causing difficulties lining up tracks when turning. Put me off spending money on a motor system. Instead went and found the mechanical system my father made for a 3mm scale home-made turntable. The TT layout he built it for was definitely at a house we moved out of in 1960, so this item is at least sixty years old. Note the hefty soldering. The next shot is a close-up of the wheel that deals with the polarity problem in exactly the same way that Peco chose. It has two sprung contacts (ball bearings in brass tubes, pointing downwards in the photo). Originally there were wires soldered to the ends. I don't like getting rid of things, even when I see no immediate need for them! Lastly, on Tuesday I took delivery of a kit of parts for the next two baseboards, from Tim Horn. Laser cut birch ply, 9mm and 6mm. My partner had suggested that I "buy a baseboard so that you finish this year". Yes, well. (All the boards in the previous layout were mostly comprised of reclaimed material; I think I spend at most about £30 over the years, and that was for a layout approx. 24ft x 7ft.) I thought the idea was daft, but did look into it. Delivery times were an issue, but I read a complaint about Tim Horn in a RMweb topic. When I read on, there were a lot of good testimonials refuting the complainer. I contacted him and very quickly my order was in the queue. Above: one of three big packs of bits for along the wall and more than half way across the room.

The image below was taken during the 'design' of the loco yard behind the running lines. Positions of track and what was possible was pinned by the location of the turntable hole. The white piece of paper is a track template that just fits inside the sleeper ends of Peco track. (I used to have an office next to a drawing office, which was very handy for free use of Autocad and an A0 roll plotter.) That one is 30 inch radius, the minimum on the layout. Next (below), things have moved on, and I've discovered the way to maximise the turntable is to have the diesel depot (Hornby clip-together kit) opposite the Metcalfe steam shed. This is nothing like I had originally envisaged, but then, that's the joy! Here I'm testing the elevation of the track ends to give a smooth ride on and off the turntable. Although I'm unlikely to go for full scenic treatment, later there will be signature structures in the loco area e.g. coaling tower (Ratio kit), water tanks and water columns (Dapol, etc), bike sheds (Wills), Knightwing oil tanks, and so on. Below, I'm installing ash pits on the entry loop. Finally, this picture was taken while I was test levelling the board in place. The chest of drawers was a bargain from British Heart Foundation and has already proved brilliant for storing tools and clutter that you need while making a layout. The height of the layout surface is 1220mm /4ft, chosen for the future days when I'm just watching the trains go by. The step stool is significant, as a result.

As usual I enjoyed working up a design using CAD. A work in progress below. (Sorry about the fuzzy screenshot - but you get the idea.) Unfortunately the elderly computer that ran Autocad with a parallel port dongle gave up the ghost part way through, so at some stage I'll have to learn Templot so I can make a record of the design. But I have plenty to do, working on the boards that are in the upper part of the drawing. There will have to be two lift out sections, upper right and bottom middle. Above. The cutaway to clear the door is being checked here. The image above was taken during the process of sticking down the cork to obtain a decent surface. PVA very slightly diluted applied with a 2" brush - leave overnight under weights, but it is reluctant to stay stuck down. I was pleased that I could find all the salvaged bits associated with the turntable. Below was taken while wiring up the underside of the Board 1. All very old-fashioned I know, but no outlay, as I'm using everything 'in stock' or recovered from the previous version.