Baseboard with curved front.

For Holywell Town I have got the main baseboard built, using 6mm ply. My first experiments with screws to build up the frame didn’t go so well as the screws ended up splitting the plywood. So this is built entirely with panel pins and copious quantities of glue! Now I just need to tidy up some of the edges but it does show quite well what a 1:27 gradient looks like. I’m quite pleased with the drop on the approach as it is at least the height of a loco in 2mm plus a bit. If this causes a problem with locos climbing the grade then I might build it up a bit to lessen the gradient.

Experimenting with the back scene

Following my visit to the 2mm Expo and having seen what Ian had done with Modbury I had a few ideas about how to build the back scene and lighting. I had a chat with Ian about the merits of a painted back scene verses a photo back scene and I did like what Ian had done. So at the moment I’m erring towards a painted back scene. The orientation of Holywell means that it is looking out over the estuary so in the background it should just be sky and clouds. Also for the lighting I know Jerry favours getting the it sorted out early on so that any painting or weathering is done under the lighting conditions it will be viewed under.

Forming bendy ply

So I’ve got some flexible ply and I’m experimenting with heights and working out fixing arrangements. I’m still trying to decide whether to just pin and glue it or to bolt it in place to make it removable.

In the meantime one little successful experiment. Forming bendy-ply, at the righthand end of the layout the curve in the back scene is a fairly sharp 4″ radius as I wanted to leave that end open as possible, see the earlier photo’s. Bendy-ply is great but it is very springy and getting it down to a 4″ radius needed quite a bit of effort to get it to shape. I couldn’t see how I could clamp it in place whilst I glued it all together. So wondering if there was some way to form it and a quick search suggested a couple of methods so a little experiment was in order.

So an offcut was soaked for 10 minutes in hot water then wrapped around a 2litre pop bottle and clamped in the workmate for the afternoon. After tea I removed it and it worked!

Curved front facia

I made a start on painting the facia for the baseboard so that I could fit some lighting. This was prompted by a blogpost by Anthony Yates who included a few details about his setup. He also included a link to the LED strip he used.

LED lighting strip

So a quick shop I bought a couple of metres of self adhesive LED strip and a transformer.

So the vertical uprights I decided on a matt black finish to minimise reflections so a small sample tin from the local diy store provided a graphite black. The top facia will have the name across the front so I decided on a gloss black finish on the outside, hopefully suitable for some LNWR embellishments, and a gloss white finish on the inside to reflect the LED lightning.

Lighting strip fitted

All fitted gives me this for the baseboard.