Model Railway Forum

Hey Guys, Been away from the hobby for 4 years after a move to the country from London. I now have a 6x8 shed that I have kitted out with basebaords ready for my N gauge layout. I switched to Kato Unitrack some years ago as I was impressed with the ease of set up and the wiring was a dream. I'm now in the early stages of designing a new layout with all the usual problems of cleaning track that's been packed away for years.

I'm very excited about getting started again and thought this time round it would be good to join a forum as it's difficult to get to a club due to working etc. Looking forward to help and helping.

Peter H

Welcome. A lovely plan. Will your layout go round the perimeter of the shed? If so, you consider a slightly higher duck under layout. You can certainly do a lifting flap, but careful attention will be needed at the joins. Is a great idea though. Of course, you can design a plan in a dogbone U shape to avoid any flaps or duck unders, or even an end to end.

Thanks for the reply, I've handbuilt a horseshoe shaped set of baseboards which go around the whole perimiter of the shed with a width of 610mm depth all round. It stands 550mm high so good head clearance. I'm considering a flap across the door space.

My former layout in London was 15ft by 4ft with an L shaped extension of 6ft by 4ft so it was pretty big. Possible too big but I had a huge loft. Modern lofts are all timbers and insulation so no room for anything else.

The main questions I have to answer now are what am I going to cover the base boards with. Not sure at all at the moment.

What are the baseboards made of?

25mm kitchen worktop with 18mm MDF fixed ontop. It is very very rigid and no chance of warping. Its also fixed to the sides of the walls so its very stable, to be honest I can't actually move it without giving it a big kick so I'm pretty pleased with that.

Wow that's thick.

Welcome to the friendly forum Peter. My layout has developed from an end to end to a horseshoe end to end and works really well for the space I have available. My wife says I'm thick but I get by!

Sheet cork may be one option?
Your baseboards are exceptionally thick at 43mm total, you'll never suffer warping!
May be a challenge to fit underside point motors though!
Look forward to reading more of your layout build.

With Kato you don't need underside point motors, they are integrated. All you need is a small hole drilled underneath to pass the lead through. One of the big reason I went over to Kato is that the system takes its power from a dedicated point switch attached to the side of the power unit and all from one thin lead. No mucking about trying to wire fiddly point motors and then having to disguise them.

I can' recommend Kato highly enough.

Using the baseboard, MDF and Chipboard in a shed, is ok if the shed is insulated and kept warm and dry, other wise the MDF and Chipboard isn't to good a idea,,,,,