Leek station- an O Gauge project

The die is cast and baseboard construction has started this afternoon, the first couple of boards and a few 100mm (depth) lengths ready to make up laminated cross bearers. Each board is 36 inches wide and 36 inches along the short inner edge, the outer edge is 42 inches long and the scenery pieces will overhang this forming the curvatures and ground elevations. All will be revealed as progress gets underway.

 

Cheers Pete, you are more than welcome to be part of an ops team or even just call up to have a play once there is something up and running in the garden... remembering that this is only a dry day set up. Dundee and I have been discussing pattern makers alignment dowels which is what will be used on this project. This evening I've been hunting around the workshop looking for suitable offcuts to make a jig which will allow me to pre bore all the drill holes needed.

 

Had a slight change of plan to the baseboard design which I think will work better and mean less constructional work, basically from being in discussion with Dundee I need to buy a 25.4mm two flute bottom edge cutting bit for my router... this is to countersink a clean hole to accept the Pattern Makers dowels which will align the respective board sections together neatly, this piece of kit is not cheap so I need to make full use of it... this bit will also make a 25mm wide trench along a face side or make a half housing joint. With this in mind instead of making the end bearers out of three layers of 5.5mm ply (which is a lot of work) I changed the size of the end pieces to 12mm ply with inside noggins fitted for additional support, so once the baseboard segments are coupled together the width across the two end beams becomes 25mm and this fits nicely into making a 25mm rebate trench on the top of the leg supports. Anyway cutting various length this morning having made up a makeshift work table from two trestles and a set of ladders.

 

So before I start a production line of making I thought it best to make just one of the segments to prove the design, this afternoon I fabricated the centre cross brace from a lamination of 6mm ply and 2 x 1 PSE noggins which I can then screw the baseboard top down into without bursting the ply and causing distortion. There's a bit of end grain planing on the brace pieces to do tomorrow because of the geometrical trapezium shape of the baseboard but once done I shall glue the segment together with Cascamite resin wood glue. Anyway this picture gives an idea of what the plan is.

 

Hi Gary, The crossover road to watch out for is situated under the main road bridge and the baseboard join will coincide between the both points midway between their blunt noses (frogs) with luck. The other set of points which consist of a B8 B6 tandem turnout and another crossover will have to have a one off special long baseboard to accommodate everything comfortably. Watched your vid last night BTW looked like a nice smooth change over.

 

The first of six segment baseboards has been assembled today, I have some addition ply lamination pieces to build on the sides as yet and the corner gussets but in the main this is done... just needs flat sanding on the edges and corners and where some filler has been added.





And a nice level top too...





Here is the trapezium shape which will give us the curve through the station when all the others are put together, the track will be placed directly onto the baseboards and the scenery and decoration will be plug in elements. I'm also going to add some small legs made from micro bore pipe into each underside corner... this will allow each segment to make up into a stacking column saving space on storage. Anyway another five of these to make then start work on making the jig which will locate hole positions for the dowels and connections.

 

In the main Pete these panels are glued on edges and panel pins tacked in, the countersunk screws you can see are in the corners and four on the centre brace to pull everything up square and tight... this gave me the start point to get an instant firm level fix. I did consider leaving this part out but decided that as there may well be a lot of building up and taking down involved the additional frame strength would be a good idea.

 

Cheers Gary, I've started making component pieces for the other five boards now working off a common template, so hopefully they will all be the same. I've also made some modifications for the production run ones from the original prototype unit but in the main these will have good strength... its shaping up to definitely not be a five minute job.

 

Here is the first of five production type cross brace pieces which will fit underneath the baseboards in the middle and be jointed with two smaller longitudinal pieces to make a level top, there is another piece clamped up in the workshop with glue setting overnight. This one differs slightly from the prototype in as much as I'm using 12 mm ply offcuts as laminating spacers instead of the redwood PSE. I'll finish the final three tomorrow and in the week then make up the end braces.

 

Thanks Chris, I suspect I may have bitten off a tad more than I can comfortably chew... but yes hopefully it will all be worthwhile... well Toto, Dundee Paul and Pete all think so.