idlemarvel
Neither idle nor a marvel
As my outdoor garden railway needs have been met with my 5" gauge Circle Line (see https://www.gscalecentral.net/threads/land-grab.311743/) time to turn to my indoor layout as autumn is not far away, if not here, meteorologically speaking. I had to dismantle my old indoor layout and box up my rolling stock in order to empty and move my shed to make way for the Circle Line. Rather than put my old baseboard back, which was a rather massive and unwieldy MDF construction which had grown "organically" over the years, I thought I would build the new one from more manageable modules which I could bolt together, and make construction and any future dismantling much easier.
I had asked in another thread if there were any G scale module standards, and after a lot of discussion the short answer is no, but the 16mm Association standards Modular Layout Standards - Association of 16mm Narrow Gauge Modellers are not a bad model to work from, which I have as far as possible. I'm not intending to make the layout portable, but having modules no longer than 1200mm (4ft) makes it all more manageable in the small space I have.
The usable space in my shed is about 2.3m x 2.9m (8ft x 10ft) but that has to include space for me to sit and work at my desk, and access to the rear portion of the shed where all the usual garden shed stuff is stored. So not much room to play with.
I have gone for 9 mm plywood baseboard this time rather than MDF, with 20mm x 67mm redwood bearers. That gives 76mm baseboard depth including top surface (9mm + 67mm). I got a local wood mill to cut the plywood panels to make sure the sides were square and straight. The modules are bolted together with M6 bolts and 6mm wing nuts and washers. Here is the result so far:
The front panel lifts out so I can get to the rest of the layout without ducking under, which was doing my back in on my old layout.
The layout is based on 150mm spacings (using 16mm Association standards mentioned earlier) for track and module sizes.
As the space is very small R1 curves and points are the standard. I need to have a continuous loop so layout design is limited. This is what I have come up with. The pink lines are the baseboard module joins.
It will be nice to get some track down and play trains, I'm getting G scale cold turkey! Once I am happy with the layout operationally I will fix it down with some cork underlay, as I suspect plywood might be a bit noisy compared to MDF.
I had asked in another thread if there were any G scale module standards, and after a lot of discussion the short answer is no, but the 16mm Association standards Modular Layout Standards - Association of 16mm Narrow Gauge Modellers are not a bad model to work from, which I have as far as possible. I'm not intending to make the layout portable, but having modules no longer than 1200mm (4ft) makes it all more manageable in the small space I have.
The usable space in my shed is about 2.3m x 2.9m (8ft x 10ft) but that has to include space for me to sit and work at my desk, and access to the rear portion of the shed where all the usual garden shed stuff is stored. So not much room to play with.
I have gone for 9 mm plywood baseboard this time rather than MDF, with 20mm x 67mm redwood bearers. That gives 76mm baseboard depth including top surface (9mm + 67mm). I got a local wood mill to cut the plywood panels to make sure the sides were square and straight. The modules are bolted together with M6 bolts and 6mm wing nuts and washers. Here is the result so far:
The front panel lifts out so I can get to the rest of the layout without ducking under, which was doing my back in on my old layout.
The layout is based on 150mm spacings (using 16mm Association standards mentioned earlier) for track and module sizes.
As the space is very small R1 curves and points are the standard. I need to have a continuous loop so layout design is limited. This is what I have come up with. The pink lines are the baseboard module joins.
It will be nice to get some track down and play trains, I'm getting G scale cold turkey! Once I am happy with the layout operationally I will fix it down with some cork underlay, as I suspect plywood might be a bit noisy compared to MDF.
