A man with a plan (or two).

 By rights, if I post in strict chronological order, I should be showing you more of the preparatory stages, readying the box for the insertion of all the interesting rail and scenic bits. However that would be a bit dull; how about I show you the vision I'm working towards? Normally I'd give you a plan, but with such a small area I think I can best demonstrate what I have in mind with a photo.

 

 

The theme is late Victorian light railway, the stock in the header should have given the game away. Please excuse the rather strange colour cast, it's a result of the white walls and ceiling to the box combined with the buff of the card trackbed. There should be an improvement once blue sky and green hills start to appear. With such a small space there's really only room for a siding off a line that will enter from the left and exit on the right. A hamlet will feature behind and to the left of the loading dock. Half of a halt will occupy the space front right. The exit and entrance of the track is going to be easy to disguise as it is to the  fore in the scene. 

It has been suggested that a light railway isn't everybody's cup of tea. My own interests range wide and far so I can see the truth in this but the light railway was chosen because it seemed to be the best bet at keeping costs to the bare minimum. If however the diesel era and urban setting are more your thing the basic plan is adaptable. I may come back with some budget suggestions for this.

Box bodged baseboard

 I decided some time ago that this exercise in frugality would need to be a minimum space effort, after all fewer materials means less expense. With this in mind my starting point is the humble cardboard box, specifically a packing box left over from the move to our latest house seven years ago. It bears the scars of that previous use, peels where packing tape has been  pulled off and the scrawl of marker pen indicating long gone contents. It is, quite frankly, a bit of a mess but if things pan out the way I hope this may add to the concept.

 

I'm always pleased to get the baseboard building stage out of the way so let's whiz quickly through what I did to the box. The first job was to glue up the flaps at one of the ends to lend some rigidity. As I was using PVA I had to let it dry overnight before adding three inch deep doubling plates along the inside of what would be the bottom of the front and back sides. Again I had to wait for the glue to dry. with this done I cut what would be the layout surface, the trackbed, from another cardboard box (some IKEA packing) and glued that onto the doubling plates and to the sealed end. Once dry the remaining open end was stuck shut. Time now to access the underside to add some rigidity to what will be the trackbed.

I cut a hole with steel rule and a sharp blade in a Stanley knife. Further strips of three inch deep corrugated card, cut at the same time as the doubler plates, were used to triangulate and brace the base. With this done I could carefully mark out the front face of the box and cut out a viewing window.

 

This is probably as good a place as any to finish this instalment. So far I could argue that the materials have not cost anything, the storage box was bought some time ago but has already fulfilled that purpose so is effectively a recycled item. I had the PVA in stock but a recent check shows that a one litre bottle costs around £3.50 so not really a budget buster given that the sticking so far has only used a fraction of that one litre.

Setting out my stall

I don't think that there's any doubt that you have to be 'comfortably off' to participate in our hobby of  railway modelling. Quite how comfortable is open to debate; some seem to require ever increasing sophistication in their models while others wince at the price of every new release. To hell with the price versus watching every penny. What I think is undeniable is that if you're struggling to find the rent each month, a frequent user of food banks or have sleepless nights worried about providing for your children then any discretionary spending on hobbies is a non starter. I'm afraid that what I have to say here is probably of little use to this social grouping but I am interested to see if I can bring the cost of model making down as much as possible so that those with a little spare cash can reap the benefits that a creative hobby brings. I'd like to extend the envelope to lower the bottom end of the 'comfort' envelope. 

 What follows is how I am tackling this challenge; I've made a start but I am still very much at the start, I have some ideas how bits will go but some stuff  is yet to be worked out. To do all this I've set myself the task of building and stocking a layout as cheaply as possible. I may have failures along the way but I'll try to be  honest and comprehensive in my costings as I progress. Let's see how it goes.