Starting Again with 00 Guage

All of his life Eddie has wanted a model train lay-out but it was always something that he was 'gunna' do one day.  Well now that he has found out that he has both Prostate and Bone cancer, that day has arrived.  Fortunately, one of our sons is also interested in model railways and being a tradie (albeit electrician rather than a carpenter) he decided that with Dad in hospital, he would take it into his own hands and build the base-boards to kick start things.  As he has a fly-in, fly-out job on a minesite, he could only work on the lay-out on one day each week that he is home.

Week one, Adam spent eight hours building the framework and putting the tops onto them.  They sat on the floor of our front room for two weeks before he could return and build the supports and legs.  He made the lay-out high enough for Eddie (6 ft 3ins tall) and Adam (6ft 1ins tall) to get under and work on and then bolted the tables to the wall.  Having the baseboards in place gave us the idea of the size of it so I brought Eddie home from hospital for a few hours to inspect it.  Naturally he is delighted and is now looking forward to getting on with it.

He is making every inch of space under the framework available for storage.  I bought him two flat-pack storage cubes from Bunnings which he put together and they fit nicely under two sections of the framework - great for those magazine holders full of model railway and steam railway magazines.

Two weeks later:  Eddie is home from hospital and feeling heaps better thanks to medication and chemotherapy.  One of his mates from the W.A. Model Railway Club got him seven sheets of 3mm cork from a flooring supplier for only $6.50 per sheet which he is now gluing to the baseboard with full strength PVA glue ($17.60 for a 4 lt bottle at Bunnings). When we realised that it wouldn't be enough to cover all of the table top, I went back and bought five more sheets. Once that is done, he will trim the cork back to the edges of the baseboards and he will be ready to lay the tracks.

So, this is where we are up to so far.......

The baseboards against the wall. The whole thing measures 3m (10ft)  x 2.4m (8ft)  with a 3 square metre operating well in the centre.  The pieces of 0 guage baseboards are now in the garage and will be built along one wall at a later date.