Model Railway in a Box – Part 3

Apologies to anyone reading part 2, it seemed to cut off the end of the article, I hope now to add the missing information.

Work is progressing well on the layout. I have now completed the electrics. The layout will include a power supply built into the bottom of the baseboard with controls accessible from the front of the layout to enable the shunting puzzle to be operated.

The PWM unit and adapter cost less than five quid from a well-known auction site and is very easy to install. Here are some images of the controls and the wiring beneath.

So with the wiring complete, we move on to the scenic work. I wanted the layout to have some raised elements to started with some old fashioned paper mache.

Once complete it was allowed to dry for a couple of days to form a nice hard surface to start scenic work on, first of all, was to paint all the areas with a nice mud coloured paint.

Next was to fix in place the Dapol level crossing gates that had been built previously. On test fitting the crossing sat too high and passing trains hit the crossing base, so to prevent this happening I had to remove some cork!

Here is how the level crossing looked once fixed in place. Not that I have added some mesh to the back of both gates for some extra detail.

That’s it for this part. Next will be to complete the roadway and start on more scenic work.