Home >> Hobbies >> Model Railroads

How to Do a Baseboard Design

A baseboard design depends on the amount of room available for the model railroad and whether the railroad can be left in position or needs to be put away after use. The first step in deciding what type of design you want is to measure your space and look at standard baseboard plans to see which type of designs will fit within that space. This will give you the parameters of your design.

Things You'll Need

Train track corners
Paper
Large circle template
Bendable curve
1/4-inch graph paper
Proportion wheel
Photocopies
Straight edge
Tracing paper
Tape
Cardboard
Scissors

Instructions

- 1
  Assemble the corners you can use with your train set. Shape the bendable curve around the outer track and then around the inner track. Draw the curves on scrap paper. Space your tracks out exactly to size on the drawing. Repeat this process for all of the curves your tracks can make.
- 2
  Tape a piece of 1/4-inch graph paper to a table. Look for engineering paper that is 24 by 36 inches. Determine your percentage of reduction. Take your actual baseboard size and reduce it to fit on the paper. Use a proportion wheel (or online proportion tool). If your actual width is 5 feet (60 inches) and your paper width is 22 inches, you'll reduce all real measurements to 36.7 percent of the original.
- 3
  Take your drawn curves to the copier store and reduce them to the reduction size. Print out 10 copies of each curve. This will give you templates to play with for your design. Cut out your photocopy curves.
- 4
  Tape tracing paper over your base graph paper. Use the lines in the graph paper to help you draw layouts on the tracing paper. Use the photocopy curves to position curves around the layout. Continue drawing layouts until you have a design you like. Transfer your finished design to the graph paper, drawing all of the lines at scale. Note the location of elevated tracks, underpass areas or bridges and any other elevation features.
- 5
  Design building scapes by placing new tracing paper over your finished layout design plan. Sketch in buildings. Cut larger structures out of cardboard to gain perspective on how they will look. Use your percentage scale when calculating your building and landscape features.
- 6
  Transfer your building and landscape plan to the graph paper. Take the graph paper to the photocopier store and have the store enlarge the plan to full size and make a print of the plan at size. Usually copier stores have large-scale printers such as blueprint machines. These will work, even if you have to splice them together into your finished large print. Use your large master print to assemble your tracks for your baseboard.

Model Railroads