So, back in February I bemoaned the lack of progress on the RR as work got in the way. That lack of progress was maintained until about a ten days ago but the seed of progress was sowed when I temporarily repurposed my own layout as a O14 track demo.

Looking for the silver lining I am going to say the delay was a good thing. Having designed the corner board and then stalled coming back to it eight months later has allowed a design review.

It’s probably fair to say the first version was designed with imagination and no not a lot of physics. The review has allowed me to check the design, superimpose a realistic curve radii on a board whose job is to turn the railway through 90’ and then further revise the design around the track layout.

The prompt for the extra board now when there is very little to show on the first is that the king point for the yard is to be close to the edge of the board and the track from it will immediately start to curve and it was going to be difficult to get the alignment right without it.There is the added factor that once there is some track down it would be difficult to play trains without some track beyond the point. The above image shows how the two boards go together  and how the high level section mates. That isn’t fully detailed as it didn’t contribute to this design exercise.

I am lucky that I have posh 3D CAD in the form of SolidWorks for other uses but it proved ideal to design this board. A sort of pet hate is the layout that is flat. Not sure why it bother me so much, possibly because a now departed friend from my old model club whilst a profligate layout builder they were always flat boards with a backscene. On the first board I have taken the track above datum so on the corner board I was keen to see the ground drop below datum.

Using CAD speak each bit was designed as a part and was then put together in an assembly which creates the image at the head of this piece. All the parts can be seen in this exploded view.

Once happy with the fit of all the tabs and slots (and posh CAD helps here as it has tools to highlight errors) the parts laid out in 2D and a cutting scheme. The 3^rd D now becomes a statement of “6mm ply for this bit, 9mm Ply for that bit”.

Having got the ply sheet sizes from the laser company I laid out the 2D cutting plot having done this sort of thing back when I worked for York Modelmaking and its not dissimilar to laying out etches. This probably saved me a few quid as it’s something the laser firm would charge for.

There was a bit of toing and froing with the files until we were all happy with them largely because posh CAD was being too clever for its own good at this stage. With this sorted the files were in for a cutting quote and to be honest I sat back thinking this is going to be where I learnt why people stick with flat boards.

The quote landed, I was pleasantly surprised, the quote was converted to an order and now we await the bits arriving.

I can already see the need for board three

Just for this illustration the third board is a copy of the first as I have done no design work for it yet. You will note that the viewing face changes sides .  This last sketch of my model room explains why. This would be the master bedroom if we were selling the house as it’s the largest but it’s in the extension and full of trains. Once upon a time I had visions of a grand layout but the day job took over most of the space and the modular approach is the antidote to getting nowhere with the larger layout.

You enter and see the viewing face of the first two boards as they sit on a peninsula made of kitchen units and have to go round the end to get to the work area. That work bench is where I try to concentrate on doing electrical, electronic and DCC type stuff.

Board 3 (& 4, 5 etc) are against the other wall and need to face inwards. I haven’t committed pen to paper or pixel to screen for board 3 but have in this instant realised there may need to be two board 3’s.  One and two are built with the idea of them being exhibited in which case 3 would need to be a fiddle yard for that whist at home it could be another scenic board. That thinking is for another day.