Hopwood fiddle yard

With the fiddle yard roads now expanded and spread out somewhat there was a likelihood of stock falling off the edge. I'd meant to add a final finishing piece to the back of this board anyway, but had run out of time before the Peco shoot (this month's Railway Modeller) and as it wasn't exactly critical to this, it drifted away into the distance. With a return to said organisation later in the month it was time to sort out this and a couple of wiring extras.

A simple enough job. I'd calculated that the minimum height over the board top to stop a DMU tipping off was an inch or so giving an overall height of 5.5" x 900mm long (I can hear the pedants gnashing their teeth). Don't forget that the boards are White Rose metric sizes not the standard CF 45 or 43". I had some of the pva left over from White Rose which is better than the usual wood glues that I use, so a layer of this and a few pins fixed the new piece to the back of the board. A couple of coats of exterior black paint and I'm done.

The boards are very heavy. People laugh when I say that I use MDF and start shouting about weight. If this is the alternative then I'll stick with my method. These 900 x 400mm boards are 9mm ply and when the two main ones are paired up to carry they are almost un-liftable. Comparing this to the Svanda boards in similar combination which are longer and slightly wider, this doesn't make me want to rush toward plywood. Beautifully made yes, lightweight no.