Best material for outdoor layout baseboard?

Hi there,

I'm new to railway modeling, I've built a few plastic loco kits in my time but my experience so far ends there.

I've recently inherited a large scratch built 0 gauge layout which was built by my grandfather. My original plan was going to be to move it in its entirety and rebuild in my garden. However, during the sale of the house we found out that the material used for the base boards/platforms was a cement/asbestos mix (quite normal back then apparently) and this meant that it could not legally be moved. So to cut a long story short, I had to dispose of everything made of this (perfectly serviceable IMO) material.

This leaves me with everything else (track, buildings, wooden supports/staging, ballast etc) but no base board or stations to be able to start the rebuild.

I want to stay true to what my Grandfather created and that was a permanent structure outdoors with wooden covers for the stations when not in use.

So, Can anyone here recommend a good material with the resilience to stand up to being permanently outdoors and the strength to hold the weight of the ballast without sagging?

Many Thanks,
Dave

 

I'd take a look at Filcris, which is a recycled plastic product. Details of their garden railway baseboard system at: Garden Railway Products - Filcris Recycled Plastic. Alternatively, you can use a concrete base with lightweight concrete blocks to form the trackbed, the blocks are sold in the UK under the Thermalite tradename: Hanson Thermalite® - Hanson - HeidelbergCement in the United Kingdom. I've started on my own garden railway using Thermalite, but the Filcris system looks very good as well.

Hope that's useful, and good luck with restoring your grandfather's railway. A great project.

Dan

 

The advice is do it once and do it well. Try and get the foundations below the frost line if you can, usually about 9" or so below the surface but it will depend on your soil type and depth. Avoid wood in the ground at all costs. If you need to go in to the ground for raised sections use the long metal spikes and bed them in a good post setting mix. The plastic recycled woods are good but they 'creep' over time so fixings become loose, make sure that you can get to them to tighten them up. Concrete fence posts as beams worked well but look nasty so need a good way of disguising them.

For the running surface roofing ply covered in roofing felt works as well but make sure that the edges are sealed. I have never found a durable long term solution for retaining ballast. If you leave 'holes' in it the water gets in an freezes, breaking up the ballast. If you make it solid it cracks as the plastic moves. I just think of it as dynamic and part of the work in maintaining the line.

My current line is 'portable' as it runs round the edge of the patio and is bracketed to a concrete wall. Last year it got to -22 and +41 with no real problems.