After much deliberation I decided that I would use 400 x 250 x 50mm laser cut MDF scenic boards produced by Tim Horn (http://www.timhorn.co.uk) as these enabled me to work easily on a small baseboard within the very tight confines of my 7ft x 5ft garden workshop.

Tim Horn’s baseboards come as well-packed flatpack kits of 3mm MDF that take as little as 10 minutes to assemble using PVA adhesive.

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I used brass pattern makers dowels to align the boards and also for carrying the DCC power and control signals to each board. Each board is autonomous regarding the control units so that each board can be tested as an individual unit, or as part of a short series of boards. The only way to test the whole 3.2m layout is to lay it along my house’s hallway!

The layout will be based on 8 boards as shown below:

Two boards as a fiddle yard

Then the start of the 6 scenic boards