And now for something completely different….

Having built some rolling stock, I thought I’d move back to complete the two USA N-club modules that I’d been building.  But I just haven’t been happy with them.  It’s been a strange, shrinking, progression – first 2.8m of N-club boards, then 2.om simplified, then 1.7m cut back further.  And now….

I had bought a Tim Horn laser-cut baseboard, 3′ x 1′ size a while back.  It suddenly occurred to me that the sidings from the N-club modules would exactly fit within the board.  Add a couple of feet of ‘fiddle stick’ and we have an American shunting plank.  I decided to give it a go, keeping the LV theme, as I have all the buildings for the layout constructed.  Trouble is, the smaller the layout gets, the happier I seem to be with it!

The Tim Horn board went together very well and quickly – completely recommended for an easy but quality baseboard.  Unfortunately, he has stopped taking orders for the next 3-4 months, as the demand during lockdown has been so great.

A short, vicious, session with a saw or two extracted the board with the trackwork and wiring intact.  I’m very happy with the track layout, so I didn’t want to relay it.  You can see that there have been one or two other layouts of the sidings!

I then cut holes in the baseboard to fit point motors direct to the original track board, and allow the wiring to be reused.  It also allows the main siding area to be raised by 1/2 inch or so above the board, and I will have a water feature along the front of the board.

And the last step last night, fit the old board into the new.  Next job, point control, reconnect the point frog wiring and a backscene.

And hopefully, it will look something like this when it’s completed. The buildings will no doubt get rearranged, but this gives the overall impression.

Hopefully more next time.  My only worry is that I seem to enjoy hacking existing railways about more than building new ones!  And of course, I do still have to work out what to do with the N-club modules….