Flockburgh infrastructure
 
a model by Brian and Phil Parker
Legs

Flockburgh is a tribute to 9mm plywood. The baseboards and legs are all made of the stuff. Nothing special either - just ordinary ply bought from a proper hardware shop and cut to size by them on a big saw.

 

The legs are a novel design that we nicked from someone at a show. Made entirely of flat panels that slot together with a couple of bracing struts, no bolts are required for assembly. Mind you, getting this 3D jigsaw together can be entertaining and as you can see, each piece is numbered and described in big thick pen to aid us.

 

The panels travel in a cloth bag and have the advantage of packing flat, so they can go under stuff in the back of the car.

 

Baseboards

The baseboards are simply pinned and glue together from the pre-cut parts. Not extra bracing was required. The backscene is fitted to the back and is made from MDF, we'd probably run out of ply at that point and the shop was shut.

The scenic extension with the quayside is an afterthought, hence the different coloured wood.

 

The boards sit on top of the legs, the two aren't fixed together.

 

Our fascia folds up to form a square O shape that protects the lights, four normal light bulbs. It's supported by softwood gallows which are bolted to the leg system. These four bolts are the only ones in the whole layout.

Hinge

Each board is attached to its neighbor with a pair of demountable hinges front and back. Simply pushing the pin in connects them and handles track alignment. With 14.2mm gauge track this is obviously important and so far these hinges have never let us down.

 

In fact we've used these on all the other layouts successfully and can't understand why anyone would want to use dowels or sloppy bolts to do the same job. The hinges are available from any DIY store - get the real thing, don't buy normal hinges and try removing the pins. I think these pins are a bit thicker than normal and certainly a few mm longer.

Fiddle yard

Our fiddle yard is the more complex board of the train set. The table slides on the sort of runners found in filing cabinets and available for purchase separately from many outlets. As well as being free running, they support plenty of weight at full extension - plenty for lightweight 3mm scale stock !

 

Locking is handled by bolts made from sliding brass tube from the K&S range. Normal DIY sliding bolts weren't accurate enough to supply the track alignment required.

 

Above the table is a display case for spare locos - always a popular feature and a great way of keeping models not in use out of harms way.

 

Beach Huts

The control panel is a simple plywood box which holds the CDU for operating the Peco point motors. Cheap push buttons direct the power as required. All mains electricity is kept on the floor in proper transformers.

 

To hand you can see a doofer for poking recalcitrant couplings, a DOGA track rubber and a spare bit of track to help explain how it is made. All our trackwork is scratchbuilt from code 60 rail and PCB sleepers and this attracts a lot of questions.

 

The panel top is plasticard with "go faster stripe" to make up the minic diagram.

Goods shed

Control is simply via a pair of perfectly normal Gaugemaster hand held feedback controllers. No DCC or anything complicated for us !