Down on Beaverbrook: layout construction begins...

We’re out of the gate, the Canadian project layout has been started after months of planning, meandering and procrastination I’ve got something up to look at as the process moves from 2D planning to 3D reality...

The tank car hides the train nicely, this is the headshunt, and staging. Trains will start here, and push their train into the end of spur siding at the start of a switching cycle. 

It’s funny, sometimes the hardest part of a job is starting. That’s certainly the case here, once I’d used my knuckle to tap the wall to work out where the stud work was, and checked with a few ‘test’ holes, it was only 30 minutes and all the racking was up on the wall. Screwed into the stud work it should be strong enough with three screws on each vertical rack.

Using a long metal edge and spirit level, checked afterwards with the ‘measure’ app on my iPhone, I’ve got a stable and level base to work from. The shelf is 9mm ply, a little twisted on delivery but it’s settling down ok. One join to make above my workbench, which should be hidden by scenery. I’ve toyed with using foam on top, to allow me to bury wiring and point motors etc, but this layout seems so simple I think I might just work from the ply up... cork sub-roadbed to give some variation in levels, wiring on the surface buried in scenery, manual wire in tube point throws with frog juicers as the layout is definitely DCC now.

View at the Co-op feed mill end looking at the ‘end of spur’.

I took a few photos with stock and boxes posed to help give a feel of the scheme. If you compare these to the real Beaverbrook you’ll see I’ve somewhat shortened things but hopefully it still has the character of the place...

Looking down Beaverbrook, the SW1500 is on a siding that doesn’t exist in reality, but used to, or it can also stand in as the cement spur.

The feed mill will feature some silos and the lovely old building behind the  left covered hopper. A road will cross here, and then the spur is paralleled by the end of track.

The cars at the front obscure what’s behind really nicely.

The overall view of the layout. I should add, that after this was taken I took it all down and dropped the height by 2”! It doesn’t sound much but has improved viewing no end and will make working on the layout a lot easier. I’m planning on getting the board painted and installed properly and then moving on to the lighting pelmet before work on the layout proper can commence. More soon...