One of the things my Beautiful Wife puts up with (and believe me, she puts up with a lot), is my tendency to scrounge anything that looks like it may be useful, one day. Of course what happens is the items usually disappear into the attic/cellar until I start trying to get organised, when I can be found scratching my head and wondering why I thought it was worth collecting 14 cream cheese pots*.
On the other hand, every now and again it all makes sense, such as when the Stephen at the Narrow Planet blog mentioned that he was building the baseboard for his latest layout out of foam board, which as far as I can tell, is a layer of polystyrene sandwiched between two layers of card. At this point a light went on in may head: one of the things the Great Organisation Project revealed, apart from the floor and an apparent surfeit of cheese cream pots, was a large pile of high quality cardboard which I collected ages ago with vague ideas about making it into a baseboard, and an equally large pile of polystyrene slabs. Combining the two might, possibly, give me a sort of heavy duty foam board, which would hopefully be less likely to warp than cardboard. Or maybe I’m just indulging in wishful thinking. As the materials came free thus far, I’m inclined to risk it: having a real baseboard would represent a massive step forward, after all. I just need to figure some way to make a sturdy baseboard join.
I’ll take a picture when I’m done. You don’t want to look at a badly lit pile of cardboard and polystyrene do you? Please say no.
*They are vaguely hopper shaped, and I have vague memories of an ambition to build a ballast train. I also recall that soon after I realised the cartons were the perfect shape for this, the company changed to square cartons.
Andy
You’ll find that your proposed method of construction has already been used to great effect; search for the layout Simplicity Sidings by Stephen Bennett on the Gnatterbox – http://forum.gn15.info/
That should give some encouragement to proceed.
Thanks Alan- I don’t know why I missed that when I saw Simplicity Sidings on the Gnatterbox first time…
Right, where’s me craft knife?
Re: “where’s me craft knife?”
Buried under the pile of scrounged stuff?
Why didn’t I think of that?