After we had constructed our initial layout and had quite a few buildings made, it was decided we should have some painted MDF boards to lay everything out on to help us with the setup at any shows we went to. My father-in-law was tasked with building and painting the boards for us.

6mm MDF tops and 25mm wooden batten frames and then some 25mm battens using to hold everything together.

He painted the green onto the boards before dropping them round to our house and once we had them laid out of the floor we placed the track and buildings back on top and marked out where we wanted all the roads to be, which were then painted on. The final thing to be painted on was a straight canal at one end.

Some of the track was fixed to the boards using small amounts of silicone sealant (so it could be removed later without damaging anything) which meant that when we would take the layout to shows a fair amount of it was ready to go and it just needed assembly and the models placing where they went.