How do I add baseboards?

[Franco]

Perhaps I'm starting the wrong way, ( if so, surely you will tell it to me in a kind manner) but my first question is:
how do I set my baseboard dimensions before starting "laying" track?

 

[Martin Wynne]

Perhaps I'm starting the wrong way, ( if so, surely you will tell it to me in a kind manner) but my first question is:
how do I set my baseboard dimensions before starting "laying" track?

@Franco

Hi Franco,

Welcome to Templot Club.

It's not the wrong way, because it's your railway. But most Templot users would design some trackwork first. Otherwise how do you know how big to build your baseboards, or where to make the board joins to cause the least difficulty in tracklaying?

As you create a track plan in Templot, you can see the grid dimensions on the screen, so you have a good idea how the layout size is developing, and whether it is going to fit in your available space.

But if you want to start by having rectangular baseboard outlines showing on the screen, you can use these menu options to add various sizes:

cheers,

Martin.

 

[Franco]

Well, it's quite a different approach but .... I'll see what I can get

 

[Bill Campbell]

Hi Franco

My approach for several projects has been to produce a scale drawing of the baseboard outlines in a drawing package and save this as a graphic file - jpg for example.

I then import this file into Templot as a background image and scale to suit.

This is a small O gauge project for a friend to fit in a 10ft long garden shed - the tapered end is to allow the shed door to open. The drawing package has also been used to illustrate an alternative position for the sector plate used as a fiddle yard.

I have also used this approach for much larger projects - the last being an O gauge layout that measures 10 metres by 5.5 metres.

Regards.

 

[Tony W]

I suppose it depends where you are starting from. Many off the shelf baseboards are preset sizes. My straight baseboards were acquired secondhand thus predating my layout, so were in the main a predetermined size and getting some of the pointwork to fit was quite tricky in places, but my end curved baseboards were designed to fit the curvature of the track design using a mixture of drawn background shapes and track center lines for the curves, which produced some odd shaped baseboards.
Both approaches are I think equally valid.
Regards
Tony.