Product Description

This book gives a complete introduction to the basic tools, materials and techniques need to construct a foundation for a layout of any size or scale. Starting from the traditional solid top baseboard and working through to more advanced designs, step by step guides demonstrate the techniques of assembling one of the most important components of your railway.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #78392 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 80 pages

Customer Reviews

Not bad but lacking depth and breadth
If you have never built a model railway baseboard before then this book is a decent beginner book. For someone like myself who has built at least 20 or more layouts or modules, it is only slightly useful. It describes a few types of baseboard and basically when and why you might choose each one and then describes the basic construction techniques for each. In some cases the book goes so far as to offer a few suggestions as to how you could modify that baseboard to suit certain situations, but this is one area where it lacks depth. For some of the baseboards the book fails to go into enough detail about the construction of a baseboard or other modifications that may be made to address some issues you might encounter. I would think that most hobbyists are a dab hand with a power tool and thus would be able to continue where this book leaves off, so the lack of depth may not be a problem. Unfortunately though I feel it also fails in its breadth as it does not cover a couple of ideas and designs that I would have considered useful. One area where this book is strong is in its coverage of alternative materials to wood and in cutting and working tips. Although I expected to get a lot more of it the book is still worth the money and there's bound to be some useful nuggets you can get out of it.

a good start
Similar to the other review, this is a nice book with plenty of good colour pictures and a readable style. However, you'll very quickly 'outgrow' it. In some ways, that is the beauty of the book - you can read it and reach the end whereas other books seem to plod and on and are never finished.

If you're new to model railways, buy it; but if you're not, you'll probably know most if it already