All In A Day's Work

Yesterday was wholly dedicated to making progress on the layout build teased in the previous post. And progress was made - I have a new layout.

Earlier in the week I salvaged two pieces of baseboard from my old layout: one of the big 1.8x1.2m (6x3ft) centre boards, and another 1.2x0.8m piece which was on one of the outside ends. Together that gives me a nice size to accommodate the track plan as well as the controls.

Before I could do anything with these boards, they had to be cleaned off. The main work here was removing and, if at all possible, reclaiming the previously used track bed. That was a very mixed bag. I have in the past used two brands of EVA foam track bed: Woodland Scenics, and DCC Concepts. I generally glued down the track bed with a thin layer of PVA, and found that reclaiming the foam lengths was pretty easy: pry up a corner and then gently pull off the entire length. The track bed would come off leaving minimal residue.

Of course that was true for the Woodland Scenics material which I had bought for the first, small layout. When I started the bigger layout, I tried to save money, and bought the stuff from DCC Concepts instead - same shape, same material, but way cheaper per metre. That came with drawbacks though - the DCC Concepts track bed does not lift off nearly as well. It splits into several layers, tears easily and leaves a lot of residue. It took a fair bit of patient scrubbing with a damp sponge to get rid of most of it.

Once that was done, I applied two coats of paint, to cover up marks from previous tracks and give me an even surface. I decided to not go for white again, but picked a pale green instead - in hindsight maybe a smidgen too pale, but be that as it may, the two coats covered everything nicely and dried very quickly, though I reckon the beautiful sunshine we had yesterday helped a bit. Painting was done at lunch - way sooner than I had expected, so I gave the boards some extra time to dry.

Then it was time to put the legs back on the baseboards, join them and move them into place. I took my time with this, since I wanted to make sure the two joined pieces would create an even surface. I also put some foam tape on the sides touching the walls, to prevent damage to the walls of this rental unit.

And then I still had ample time left in the day to start laying track. Which was probably the most satisfying part of the day - just putting track on baseboard and seeing my plan come together was great. My normal track laying process is to put the track in place and pin it down, then mark out the contours of the track as well as the point positions. Next, the track will be lifted again, and I will glue down the track bed and drill holes for the point motors. 

But that is a task for another day. Stay tuned.