Continue making the new boards.
Stephen absent again, but this time due to a competition at his bowls club (which are only very occasionally allowed to impinge on Wednesday's).
Laurence and Geoff pressed on and assembled the rest of the boards apart from the side 'skins' of plywood. The construction chosen for the baseboards was to allow for any vertical faces required for the scenery, to be made with a single span of plywood rather than adding a plywood face on top of a baseboard frame. As the precise line/height of the scenery is unknown at this stage, the side 'skins' will be added in due course.
The question of trackwork for the new boards was then discussed. Geoff had assessed options and priced them up as follows:
Peco SL-500 O16.5 track: £4.50/yard or £46 for 12 yards
Peco SL-100 OO track £3/yard (which we could use for the hidden tunnel bits)
Peco code 100 rail: £9 for 6 yards, i.e. £3 per yard of track.
Peco code 83 rail: £9.13 for 6 yards
Peco code 70 rail: £7.71 for 6 yards (I don't suggest we use this)
PCB for sleepers: ???
As described previously, the existing 'Cottesmore' track was handmade using code 70 fb rail on PCB sleepers. For new track on Worton Court, code 100 fb rail on PCB sleepers was used. We would continue to make our own pointwork using 100/fb rail and PCB sleepers regardless, so the natural option would be to repeat the 100 fb/PCB format, but we shouldn't disregard the O-16.5 alternative completely. Using ready-made track for hidden areas would make a lot of sense.
We will discuss the matter further, next week.
