Benchwork

 Having dismantled the huge layout here are my general suggestions:

• Use a standard.  Standard sized underlying bench work is recyclable, which means you don't have to rebuild the bench work every time you scrap off the overlying layout.  The old SASME layout features a box girder mounted on L girders that is in turn mounted on standard modular legs.  The box girders are each 72" long and 30" wide, though a couple are a little smaller. These box frames, L girders and legs have been in constant use since at least the sixties or even fifties through a couple variations of the layout, be it in the old sectional format, the SASME house layout, the modular layout that came after the house, or the layout as it has been in the shop.
   
• Don't make any one section larger than what one person can comfortably carry.  If moving the sections going to be like moving a grand piano up the stairs, it's too big.  I did lose a large section of my first apartment layout because it was 7' x 3.5', and the first turn out of the room was Too Small to allow me to move it out of the room without dismantling it further.  Had that layout used a 24" framework I would have been able to save most of my work.
   
• How then, do you avoid mounting your components like switch machines or turntables over box frame beams?  Attach the layout to the bench work using risers.  This effectively makes the bench work a separate skeleton, while reducing the number of obstacles under the layout.If possible, use wood.  Conversely, avoid experimental materials like metal and PVC.  My hands were covered with bites and scrapes by the third day, and that was from the screws.  I can't imagine how much worse it would have been if the whole layout had a metal under frame.  PVC would have been a total loss.  As it is right now, I have been able to salvage almost 99% of the under frame. Which brings us to the next topic:
   
• Use screws as the standard fastener.  The SASME layout was held together with screws, which made my job easy.  Nails would have been a bear, and I would have had much lower fastener recovery; what nails I removed came out completely crooked.  As it is, I have removed in excess of ten pounds of screws, of which 95% are still very useable for the nest project.  The power driver did most of the work, and I just searched them out and removed them.  Screws are much, much easier to remove and reuse.  I further recommend predrilling pilot holes, and if you want to aid your screws, use a bar of soap to lubricate them by gently dragging the screw across the soap: end result, no squeal.  With this being said: 
   
• Avoid "Captive" screws at all costs.  Captive screws include mounting the roadbed to the bench work or risers from the top where they get covered later with scenery.  In the areas where this method was used, I lost most of the materials.  To avoid a captive screw, make T-Risers so the screws can be mounted from the bottom.
   
• If two screws will do, avoid glues!  Seriously consider cutting back on glue if you're screwing everything together.  Anywhere glue has been involved, I have lost material.  Just the reality of the game.  On the SASME layout, they used two screws and then glue to secure the car card boxes to the fascia, and it has been a bear removing them for salvage.  About one in five has damage due to this remove, and one in three needs to have the back sanded off on the belt sander.
   
• Just say no to Nails.  They may seem like an easy option, and they really are easy to use if you like driving them, but three nails are nowhere near as structurally secure as two screws.  I have one box girder that was assembled with nails and it is in pieces right now, having collapsed after being stressed int the strain direction.  The nails, all nine of them, pulled right out of the wood, and the three studs between them and the opposite rail collapsed in upon themselves.  It's not entirely the nails fault, I suppose, whereas the main beam was cut between the third and fourth stud, but the bench work box frames held together by screws and compromised in a similar manner have all survived intact.  I had a terrible time every time I encountered a section where nails were used to secure the overlying substrate to the bench work plywood top.  They may have been small, but they HURT when you hit them!  Had these areas been screws from below, I would have had a much easier time disassembling these sections.

Electrical

 The wiring under SASME was a nest of many twisty turny wires leading off in all directions.  It's hard to avoid this, but it's going to happen eventually if the layout is big enough and there's enough time spent on it.  Here's some things I consider important:

• Designate a standard and stick to it.  Standard Gauge bus, Narrow Gauge Bus, Lighting Bus, SIgnaling Bus, make each a different color.  If you have different districts, use colored heat shrink tubing to make the new district a new color.  Do not connect feeders from the standard gauge bus to the narrow gauge bus!


• Use clamps or other such manners to attach the bus wires to the bottom of the layout, preferable above the box benchwork.  Avoid using the large holes so many refer to use within the bench work itself.  When it comes time to remove a bus or change out a wire, if you used the holes you have to pull that wire out through all the holes.  If you used clamps, you can remove the clamps at the attachment points and it all comes off.


• Use a terminal block at each bench work junction point on each side of the joint.  You may be in a rush and simply clip the connecting wire between them when you dismantle the layout, but a short wire is a cheap replacement


• Use terminal strips to make junctions in the bus lines for feeders.  Then, attach solder pads or strips unto which the feeders are soldered.  The SASME layout simply cut the shielding off at any random place where it was needed and then the feeders were soldered to it, which means it's not exactly pretty under the layout.  The new sections were better in the standards department, but they were not pretty enough to easily salvage.


• Solder a feeder to every rail,  Don't solder joiners unless it's to very short sections [< 1"].  Don't solder feeders to joiners, whereas it makes salvaging track difficult.  I found all three practices but never all at once under the SASME layout, and I even found long sections with no feeders at all, which would explain why we had so much operational trouble running it.


• Fred B. Addendum:  One good solution - realized several years too late - would have been to devise some method to hinge the framework to the wall, work on the underside as necessary, then lower & cantilever it. (That's probably simplifying things quite a bit, come to think of it, but it might have worked!) So, I gave up on my dream of installing Blue Points for the turnouts and anything else requiring tours of duty underneath, and instead devised a simple method to run all of the wiring along the edge of the benchwork, having only to drop feeders, etc, thru holes and fish them out to the front.  I have yet to use this idea myself, but it warrants closer investigation!

Benchwork Standards Sound Familiar

Your benchwork standards sound very familiar.  Wasn't this what Linn Westcott espoused in his L-girder articles and book?

I agree with your standards.  There are a few places where I have violated them, but when I'm "forced" to, I try to document it with notes on the benchwork itself, using a black permanent marker.

I also agree with your electrical standards, and that is what I'm trying to do on my present layout (under construction).

...

I bet it IS the Linn Westcott Standard under this layout, the L-Girder and Box Frame setup.  Having seen it up close and personal, I can see why it is so advantageous.  It supports both sectional layouts, modular layouts, and would do very well with TOMA as well.    And you can see how elaborate the setup can become on top of hte boxes; the Sky IS the limit!

Track

 There's not much to note here, but I did discover a couple things:

• If you're building a serious Chainsaw and it will be one of many chainsaws, Use code 100 track!  As silly as it may look, Code 100 track is VERY easy to take up when compared to Code 83 in similar ballasted conditions.  Code 83 is far more fragile, and there will be much more work involved reconditioning used Code 83 for the next layout.
   
• Don't solder the rail joiners.  Doing so will make your future dismantling project far more wasteful than if you had used joiners alone and relied on feeders for your power continuity.
   
• Consider using power-routing switch throw devices.  Dead frogs and ground throws are easier, but we had enough issues on the SASME layout to convince me that powered frogs are a boon.


• Use ONLY Elmers white glue while doing your ballast work and other scenery work, and go easy on the mixture ratio!  We used something different in the Yard, and while I was able to get it up, the results were very rubbery.  Elmers white glue otherwise meant after fully soaking the layout for ten minutes I was able to get the track up with a putty knife.  But this brings us to the next big topic:


• Use Track Nails!!!  Seriously, it may seem like a lot of work versus a bead of silicone or other adhesive, but at the end of a layout, any stick substance holding the layout together is NOT your friend!  As it is, there will be enough glue inteh balast to firmly secure the track beyond what track nails might accomplish.  Taking them up is very easy with an old worn set of Xuron, you close the jaws enough to pop the head up and then leverage the nail out, yielding a recovered track nail and a loosened up piece of track.  Well worth the effort!

Scenery

Scenery is a touchy subject - there are SOOO many ways to do it.  This being said, and having used everything from Styrofoam to screen to cardboard strips, there are some methods that yield higher recovery.

• If you want a nice, soft substrate between your hard layer and your track layer, USE CORK.  I put this in double emphasis because cork really is the leader here when it comes to reuseability.  In order to lift old ballast, I SOAK the surface with water - essentially pour the water out on the ballast - and then come through with a putty knife about five minutes later.  In all the areas on the SASME layout where the substrate was cork, I had a 99.9% recovery rate.  In the places where the layout was Homosote, the recovery rate is down near 2%, whereas I have kept one 2' section because it was a nice self-contained module for future use.  This being said, anywhere I encountered Homosote, the end result was complete removal followed by disposal.  The main reason being, as you remove the track adn then scrap off the ballast, you unevenly strip off the top layers of the Homosote.  Midwest cork and the cork sheet we used under the yard did not behave like this in the slightest, essentially returning to their unballasted state.
   
• You don't need a screw every three inches.  One every 12" will do!!
  
   
• Plaster Hardshell really is the way to go.  The end result is tough, and because most of the SASME layout was built like this, I was able to salvage out perhaps as much as 85% of the scenery rock castings.  The big benefits to hardshell include the fact that it is self supporting when it is finished, and further, you can get underneath it and do work "from the underside of the mountain" if you need to.
   
• Use Cardboard webbing and hot glue to make the underlying structure.  It's really that simply, and you can't get much cheaper.  Hot glue is far better than using stables, whereas the staples are harder to remove later AND they hurt quite a bit if you miss one on the board as you're pulling it out.


• Avoid metal screening and staples - that stuff HURTS when you're taking the layout apart!!!  It's also unnecessary [as is the cardboard strips] once the hard shell has cured, whereas once the plaster has hardened up, you could remove all of it and the mountain will stay where it should be.


• If you have to use newspaper balls to make your mountain shapes, do so, but if at all possible, keep the bottom open so you can remove the paper from underneath when you're done.  These areas make nice critter nests and the newspaper balls effectively do nothing once the plaster has cured, so take them out and toss them.  For this reason I advise against the foam substructure that I have used for so long, whereas foam is difficult to remove and it's solid - there's no getting under the scene if you want to add a campfire or fireflies later.  You may perhaps use foam to make a scene, overlay it with plaster cloth and a layer of plaster, and then remove it form the Styrofoam when finished, but this seems like a lot of work when it can be done with cardboard webbing or newspaper balls.

Options

Not sure what you mean by "box girder", I think you mean an open grid benchwork.  I would also suggest narrower benchwork unless you know you won't want any kind of peninsula.  Typically rooms are somewhere in th 8-9 ft or 11-12 ft wide range.  30" deep benchwork consumes 5 ft, so in a narrower room would allow only a 3-4 ft aisle down the middle of the room.  In a wider room there is 6-7 ft in the middle, but that is too narrow to effectively put a peninsula  If you put one 3)" down the middle of the room that leaves 3.5 to 4.5 feet for two aisles, very, very narrow.

On the the other hand if you do 16 or 18"  deep benchwork you have a much more versatile system.  In a narrow room that leaves between 5 to 6 feet down the center of the room, very open.  On a wider room, at 12 ft you can but a bench on both sides of the room, with a single bench peninsula and still have 3.5 + ft wide aisles on both sides.  Or you can put a double width peninsula (bench on each wall and two down the middle and still have a 3 ft aisle.

Amen!

 Or.... make the grid the lowest part of the frame and support the roadbed on risers.  I did that on my previous two layouts and put about 8" between the top of the grid and the bottom of the roadbed.  I you put the grid right under the roadbed then when you remove the grid from the L girders, all the switch machines hang out the bottom.  By making the grid the bottom layer, then all the under the table stuff is protected.

which 95% are still very useable for the nest project.  The power driver did most of the work, and I just searched them out and removed them.  With this being said:

Ditto on screws and access to said screws.

If you're building a serious

I would suggest that if you build a sturdy section, you can move anything down to code 70 handlaid (or smaller)with no problems (been there, done that).

I used latex caulk for my son's layout to anchor the cork roadbed.  The down side was when I sanded off teh areas where the tracks were the calk gummed up the belt sander and left a sticky residue.  It never fully came off the plywood roadbed.

...

The box girder frame here refers to the horizontal gird that is mounted on the veritcal L-girders, the twin L girders themselves being mounted to the legs yielding the verticle L-Girder and Leg section as one separate component from what goes above it.

My legs are 18" wide, whereas each set is a fixed set, so the narrowest bench work grid that could be used with them is indeed 18".  The thing is, this box girder set has seen years of use as both sectional modulars and then as a full sized permanent layout, and the 30" was further expanded out as much as 3" or even a foot in some places using the overlying layout to bring the width out.

When I built my Apartment layout, I used a 24" width for my work - a box of this size would work well with my L-Girders.   If you're in a small room [100-200 square feet], though, you'll want to use wall hangers instead of the leg setup any ways, which means no L-Girders are needed - simply screw the bottom of the box girder to the brackets.

You've got it - that's what the SASME layout used as well, and it works very well indeed!  The layout is attached to the bench work box frame girder via risers, but the layout itself was never mounted directly onto the box girder save for the new yard.  Indeed, this provides room to protect the hanging equipment, while also providing ample access.

So you have the grid, the risers holding the layout sub base 3-4 inches above the box girder, and then the rails on top of that sub base - it works like a dream when it comes time to tear down the layout or even just modify a section - I could go under this layout, remove the risers under the section I want to change, cut the scenery at the base of the rock castings, and I have the whole area open for new scenery [I.E. see the Turkey Creek Project].

Serious Chainsaw Definition

Dave, a Serious Chainsaw here means you are going to build a fully functional chainsaw railroad and then tear it down to the track to build the next fully functional chainsaw railroad.  This is the fundamental underlying feature of the true chainsaw: in the end, you're going to scrap it all out.

This means all of your track will have to come off.  At this point, the practice of Experience is in the pudding" Code 100 Track tolerates FAR more abuse than Code 83 or anything with finer spikes/spiking systems to hold it in place.  This isn't a matter of "building sturdy," this is a matter of "We're going to rip the "Built Study" apart and see if we can reuse it."

I was able to salvage the Code 83, but it took a lot more patience and preparation than the code 100 - if you missed a track nail with Code 83, it was very, very unforgiving.

Latex Caulk

I know people have had much success using Latex Caulk,  but I cringe when I run into it.  It seems unnecessary when all you need to anchor cork roadbed is white glue and thumbtacks [or pushpin if you're working on a Styrofoam base] - you can remove the thumbtacks after the glue is dry.  Conversely, you can also use track nails with the white glue; they work very, very well for this purpose.

Its astonishing to know about

• online gambling australia

RE: Electrical

Benny-

Excellent advice on all points! Just a couple of things I wanted to add about wiring. When I designed and built my benchwork (for a 9'x11' layout, around-the -walls with a peninsula), in one end of the garage, I prided myself on my solid, level work in attaching the framework to the walls and cantilevering it underneath so there were no legs straight down at the front. It was all solid, level, - and permanent! As time went on, I realized that working on anything underneath the layout wasn't a viable option for me, having a really beat-up rotor cuff in my right shoulder and a 73+ years-old back & neck that would go on strike anywhere underneath the layout 95% of the time. One good solution - realized several years too late - would have been to devise some method to hinge the framework to the wall, work on the underside as necessary, then lower & cantilever it. (That's probably simplifying things quite a bit, come to think of it, but it might have worked!) So, I gave up on my dream of installing Blue Points for the turnouts and anything else requiring tours of duty underneath, and instead devised a simple method to run all of the wiring along the edge of the benchwork, having only to drop feeders, etc, thru holes and fish them out to the front.

I took a 10" length of coathanger wire, bent it in half, then put a 2"  90-degree curve in the bent end. then I took a large washer with a small hole in the center (there's a name for them that escapes me at the moment), & a brass screw with a shoulder that fit neatly into the center hole of the washer, and fastened the two ends of the wire, one one either side of the screw under the washer, to the outside of the 1x4 benchwork. Several dozen of these holders, attached every 10 or 11 inches or so along the bottom facing inward, out of the way, form a sort of "wiring trough" into which all the bus wiring (properly labeled and color-coded, of course) goes. Frog juicers and/or terminal strips are mounted on thin luan ply boards, tacked just to the inside edge of the 1x4 benchwork. Now if for some reason any or all the wiring would need to come out, it's right there in front & easily accessible.

I hasten to add that this idea isn't totally mine; someone in a MR article recently did the same type of thing, putting a wiring "trench" at the front of the benchwork. David Popp did the same with a niche in the foamboard front of their project N-scale layout recently. In any case, if a layout has to come apart, you wouldn't be pulling a lot of wiring thru those holes you thoughtfully drilled thru the framework for all that wire!

                                              Fred1940

*C.I.G, Cumberland Transfer RR

(*Chief In Garage; elsewhere, not so much...)

...

Fred, I saw this suggesting a couple months ago after seeing pictures of it here on MRH and immediately thought it was a great idea.  Yes, the idea escaped me while I was putting together...as did my feeling about homosote!!!

I like it very much.  The issues with application right now deal with the normal fascia functions, such as switch panels and car card boxes [if you use these items].

Fred: large washer with a

Fred:

large washer with a small hole in the center (there's a name for them that escapes me at the moment)

I believe those are called fender washers.

Chuck

Box girder question

Great advice Benny on the girder. I'm trying to picture what it looks like. I believe the L is made of 1x3 and 1x4. What do you use for the legs? What height? I like your use of an open grid. A sketch would be nice.

I'm one of those guys that can't make up their mind, that is going to change or I won't get anything done!

Happy railroad I go.

Harry

Box girder question

Great advice Benny on the girder. I'm trying to picture what it looks like. I believe the L is made of 1x3 and 1x4. What do you use for the legs? What height? I like your use of an open grid. A sketch would be nice.

I'm one of those guys that can't make up their mind, that is going to change or I won't get anything done!

Happy railroad I go.

Harry

...

I think a couple pictures might be more effective here.

First up, we look at the box frame girders as they were initially laid out.

What you are seeing here are two rows of box frames of the standard 30" x 72" size with a spacer attached in the middle to add strength.  You can't see the legs very well, so we'll look at another area.

Here you can see the Legs as they are attached to the box frames.  You may notice how there are shelves placed between the legs.  These shelves were each removable, which meant you could get to the layout underneath to service the layout.  The club used to keep a full set of Model Railroader on these shelves plus the floor under the shelves.

This area is not as proficient, whereas the scenery/railroad level has been applied to the box frame and from above using captive screws.  This means most of these areas get reduced to scrap and little more.

Lets look at an area where the riser set up was well executed.

Here you can see there are only three risers now holding up the "Cake Topper."  I salvaged the top cap with mine and switchback intact, and it is currently sitting behind me awaiting the next layout.  Let's look at that white sectional module sitting under it a little closer.

This end cap module has a box frame that deviates somewhat from the "standard length" of 72".  Here, you can see the 1/4" bolts that hold the long bridging box frame girders together, whereas the closes set of box frames did not have any legs or L-Girders under it.

There are further four 1/4" bolts holding each leg set to the L-girders, one located up in the ear of either corner.

You may be able to see some of the holes in the leg sets better here, particularly in the brown colored leg set. Each leg set was attached to the L-Girder with two 1/4" bolts, two washers and two wing nuts per side, for a total of four on each leg set.  You can also see how the leg set is cut to maximize the strength of the junciton between legs and L-Girders.

Now I don't have any pictures of the corner module, but there were two of them with a hexagonal shapes so that they could fit like a football in the corners.  Each corner module was mounted on a standard L-girder/leg set.

From what I do have, you can see the second corner here, where that short raw wood 1x2 is perpendicular to edge of the modular sectional running along the wall [or parallel to the general trend of that modular set].]

Here, if you look hard enough, you can see the first corner module just behind the sage green legged stool

I hope this helps.   The solid nature of the legs does make it difficult to go through them, but they are both lightweight and sturdy.  You have to remember that some of these legs went on many trips to many places, such as the local mall, where the club used to set up and run, so they have lived more life then I have!

Just Say No to Nails...

After tonight's movement, moving a truck load of bench work from the SASME clubhouse to my storage unit, I have firmly decided that I Just Say No to Nails!

As edited into the main bench work block, I have one box girder that was assembled with nails and it is in pieces right now, having collapsed after being stressed int the strain direction.  The nails, all nine of them, pulled right out of the wood, and the three studs between them and the opposite rail collapsed in upon themselves.  It's not entirely the nails fault, I suppose, whereas the main beam was cut between the third and fourth stud, but the bench work box frames held together by screws and compromised in a similar manner have all survived intact.

I had a terrible time every time I encountered a section where nails were used to secure the overlying substrate to the bench work plywood top.  They may have been small, but they HURT when you hit them!  Had these areas been screws from below, I would have had a much easier time disassembling these sections.

Box Girder

He is using the term "Box girder" like most publications use "open grid".  If you search for "box girder" you will find something completely different. A box girder is a girder (a horizontal support member) that is a hollow rectangular tube.  If you took two L girders and attached them flange to web, you would get a true box girder.  He is talking about an open grid.  Basically a 1x4 or 1x3 rectangular frame with cross pieces in it.  Its the same foundation that has been used for everything from 4x8 layouts to modular systems from the 1950's until today.

Adding the L girders underneath is in some ways over kill.  You could achieve the same results just with 2x2 legs  or knee braces to the wall.  The L girder concept is very much akin to the original Domino construction proposed by Barrow.

If you attached an L girder to the wall and a 1x2 or 1x4 flat against the wall 18-24" below the L, you could set the rear member of the grid against the wall on top of the L girder and then support the front with knee braces from the front member of the grid or a cross piece down to the lower 1x4   No legs.  The floor is completely open.

Wiring along the front of the layout

Wiring along the front of the layout is what I do on my Siskyou Line and what I show in volume 3 of my layout video series, first released in 2005.

So I wholeheartedly agree with the wiring along the front of the layout idea. I also use terminal strips with feeder drops all along the front of the layout. Then the feeders just connect to the terminal strips. All I need to debug an electrical issue on the layout is a screwdriver. Soldering iron and wire cutters are not necessary.

Of course with things like TOMA (The "One Module" Approach) layout construction that we're discussing, doing tasks like installing tortoises or whatever to control the turnouts is as simple as flipping the module over to work on it. Using something like the A-frame-o-matic to hold the module while it's being worked on allows flipping the module over to only take a flick of the wrist.

As I age, I'm finding great wisdom in anything that avoids crawling around under the benchwork for any length of time.

"As I age, I'm finding great

 Maybe get a rolling cot and relax while working under there? When I was racing cars I found napping under the car on a creeper was a great place to hide( till my wife figured out I didn't really have anything to repair under there) .....DaveB

I have a shaped pillow

It supports me within a comfortable reach of the bottom of the layout. An advantage of a 34" layout height. It's carpeted down there too.

pqe

...

I'm calling them that because they're a type of box frame girder, the box being the four walls that entails each grid.  As far as layout building goes, this is indeed an OLD foundation, and I think I found out why - it's Versatile. Look at all that railroad that was built on top of it.