Question for the Railway Modellers out there... !

[350wedge]

I'm just in the very first steps to building my first serious model railway. I have the baseboard, planned my track layout and tested it before the nailing down and ballasting/landscaping etc commence!!

Question is, i'm going to paint the baseboard first probably an earthy brown colour. What is the best sort of paint to use. Have seen a pigment type colouring purposely for baseboards but it seems pretty expensive for whats quite a small bottle.

Any suggestions gratefully recieved....

[Mr Beckerman]

Always used good old matt emulsion before. Lets face it, most of it is going to be covered by scenery etc anyway.

[nickjw]

Agreed. Don't worry about the type of paint at this stage. Cheap quick dry emulsion is fine. Use Brown or Black. As Mr Beckerman states, you wont see it anyway once all the ballast and ground cover is stuck on.

Here is a link to mywebsite www.nickwrightmodelmaker.co.uk showing the construction of two of my layouts. You will see that I have not bothered painting the boards first.

www.nickwrightmodelmaker.co.uk/workbenchpart2.htm

www.nickwrightmodelmaker.co.uk/nantyglo_construction.htm

Hope this helps. You are welcome to email me if you need any help with the nest steps etc. I'll do my best to assist.

[Mr Beckerman]

lovely lovely work, Nick.

[richb]

Generally I wouldn't even bother painting the base first as it will all be covered in ballast, grass, buildings etc. etc. But what sort of size layout are you planning, mainline? narrow gauge, scale OO/O/EM/N ? Give us a few clues...