In my village (name to be finalised) as well as a shop and pub, I need a few dwellings. I decided to build a short terrace using some Metcalfe’s card kits.

As a quick aside, I’ve named the boozer The Freeman Arms after our friends, the Freeman’s, who suggested that I add a canal to the layout.

The houses were built but as I tried to place the row os six houses, I discovered that the ‘ground’ was quite uneven so I decided to 3D print some foundations.

Using Tinkercad, I eventually managed to design a framework which would sit on the baseboard and provide a level platform on which to sit my houses.

After three hours, the printer had produced this which was a nice snug fit. I was quite pleased with how this turned out as I had measured, designed and printed this from scratch – and it worked. There’s even a stone effect on the rear side (which will never, normally, be seen.

As I was building the houses, I installed some LED lights. What I’ve discovered as the easiest method of adding lights is to use a roll of LEDs, designed for 12V and cut them into short pieces of three LEDs cutting as indicated on the roll. No resistors needed. A couple of wires are soldered onto the end and fed through to emerge form the base of the building.

With plenty of space in my foundations, I connected the feeds together leaving just two wires to drop through a hole in the baseboard to be wired into the lighting bus later.

A quick test with a 9V battery revealed all connected correctly.