Ply for me

I used 5 layer Luan Ply form Lowes. They ripped the 3/4" sheet into 3" x 8' strips for me for free (they usually charge for this) I used 2 sheet for my 9' x 11' layout  for the legs and all of the frame work and had enough left over for do overs and then some..... I still have some.  It will not not twist or warp and the expansion rate due to humidity is very low.  My layout is in the garage with a car and I have had no problems.  I will do this method every time and highly recommend you look at it.  BTW I placed a cheap 1/4" ply for a deck and covered it with foam

Steve

Ply is better, and more stable than wood

Buy a sheet of 4' * 8' * 3/4" exterior grade / flooring plywood from your big box store or builders merchant, and have them cut it into 3" strips. I can usually get these for between $15-20, including the cutting fee.  You get around 15 8ft lengths out of this, plus a leftover strip.

Use this to build an open box frame (with cross members on 16" centers), and then put a sheet of door-skin luan plywood (usually 1/4 thick) on top, then place the foam on top of that.  (Some people dispense with the luan, but I find it helps when mounting switch machines, etc, and makes sure the box frame remains square and stable.

This provides a light-weight base for your layout.

You can either mount the whole thing on L girders and legs, or use 2" * 2" legs bolted to the framework.  The advantage of using L-girders is that the legs and supports are free standing.

In my case, I am building approx 2ft wide shelves in 4 - 6ft lengths, and then hanging them off the wall using steel shelving uprights and 18" brackets (double slotted type from Knape & Vogt), with the uprights firmly attached with 31/2" screws to the wall framing. They layout will (eventually) run round the walls on 3 sides of our Rec room, leaving the middle free for other uses.  I have plans to build a narrower 2nd level, but this will use luan ply and 2" foam, without the box frame as base, using either luan or hardboard for a fascia to stiffen the whole structure.

I also use lengths of the 3" * 3/4" ply as horizontal stringers between the shelf brackets and the baseboards, one up against the steel uprights, and one at the front of the brackets, to make the whole assembly as stable as possible.  Long screws go up through the shelf mounting brackets, through the stringers and up into the box frame.

My backdrop is made of 22" high 1/8" hardboard in manageable lengths (I usually use the white pre-painted boards, first painting them with my sky color), stiffened with 2" * 1" furring strips (which almost exactly match the depth of the steel uprights, resting on the rearmost ply stringer.  The baseboards keep the backdrop in place, although I may screw them to the steel uprights if I find they are not staying flat and vertical.

Sorry I don't have any photos at the moment - painting and decorating other parts of the house is taking priority.

John Senior

Living in Niagara Region, Ontario, up in the deep white North.

A couple of photos

Sounds like John and I have similar bench work. I found a couple photos if that helps you

Steve

Nice...

Plywood

Plywood will be much studier and more stable than dimensional lumber like 1x4 or 2x4. (1x2 would be pretty small).

At the club, and for my own small sectional switching layout, we make our own dimensional pieces from 3/4" plywood. Cut into 3-4" strips, it nicely substitutes for 1x4 lumber, without the warping and twisting that you can get from cheap lumber.

You can use a mix of materials, typically a benchwork grid of plywood strips and legs and supports from dimensional lumber like 2x4s will work great. (Plywood doesn't make great legs, although you could screw a few plywood strips together as an angle.)

Yeah for pictures

Thank you so much for the pictures....this is perfect...so this is what I will use then going forward...any other advice you can partake on that setup would be more than welcome

Glad it worked out for you

I used the "domino" style in my bench work.  It was popularized by David Barrow of the Cat Mountain & Santa Fe fame.  It's typically a 2' x 4' section (as pictured) "domino" that you string together for your bench work.  Some of mine are 18" x 4'. I tried 12" x 4' but that was too tippy so I kicked them out to 18" minimum.  The plywood deck is 48" off the floor and I have 4" of foam on that.   When building them I pre drilled  and then glued n screwed to get a good solid joint

I made it this way in case the layout would ever have to be moved - fortunately I did this as it comes down next week for the move.  There are two holes down the middle of every cross brace for the DCC bus wire to fish through.  If you plan on having auxiliary power for switch machines, building lights etc I would set up 2 more holes for that too.  You can see mine are the two vertical holes on the lower cross member.  There are two 1/4" holes at each end to bolt the sections together.  Bolt, washer, and then through the hole and secure with another washer and a wing nut. 

I used 2"x 2" material near each corner to make leg pockets.  Each "domino" is set up for legs on each side but if look at the second picture I skipped one set when there where two would be next to each other - under the drill there is only one set instead of two.

Probably too much info but I hope it helps.  If there is something I missed just let me know

@ Jas - Thanks.  I wish I could get to videos like yours

Steve

Pocket screws

More pictures if possible

If it is okay, I would like to see more pictures so I can get a better Idea, when I can use the full 8' length I will be doing that and will be going around the basement that way.  Now since I said the B word, should I prime them so there is no moisture issue?

More pictures.. here you go

All of the pictures I have can be seen here http://s90.photobucket.com/albums/k256/ratled/Klamath%20Line/   If there is something you need but can't find it let me know and  I'll get you a picture. 

The plywood is that good that I didn't prime anything that wasn't seen.  Here is where a better quality wood comes into play.  Although I got the 5 ply, and that works great, a better step up wood be 7 ply.  The plus side for cabinet grade wood is there is no knots to distract from the looks and weaken the bench work.

The long term plan is to paint the legs black for visual preference only.  I added 1/8th" ply 7" wide for a fascia and painted that dark green for visual preferences only. This gave it a cleaner look, a place to put car card boxes, throttle pockets etc.

You will see in the pictures I used standard door hinges in the corners so that everything will line up just right when I take it down and re assemble it.  I'll just pull the pins, unbolt everything to take it down.  To reassemble I'll loosely bolt everything together, put the hinge pins back in and tighten everything up.

I'll bet your B is better than my G with a car in it.   My temps are from the low 20's f ( that's + 20 F ) to highs of 120's, humidity is single digits to 100% and have no problems in the three plus years. 

8' x 2' can  be a bit much to handle but doable if you don't plan to move it much.  I have my cross braces on 24" center for my 4 footers and split evenly down the middle for those smaller dominos.  On my one 6' footer I used two cross braces evenly spaced.

Steve

New question

Thanks Steve for the pictures, that helps alot.  Now, a new question I have is that I have a 4ft section that is not that wide, that I have to use as a lift up section to allow my wife to get over by the washer.  Am I going to be able to do this, or will it have to be a lift out?

It depends.

Nathan it depends on what not too wide is, how often you plan on having it in or how often you will have to lift up n down.  If it will be only a few inches wide to bridge the aisle way and you will only have it in place when you operate and pull it the rest of the time, a good lift out will work fine.  Something like this should be more than fine

http://www.cmrailroad.com/images/DSC_4422.JPG

If you are going to be wanting to leave it in place all the time with a frequent non railroad crossings then consider a lift bridge such as George put in this thread https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/the-new-great-western-upper-level-is-operational-12188820  (First reply, third picture from the bottom) or as Jas did in his very well done (picture intense) blog here https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/jlt-railroad-blog-lift-out-bridge-construction-12188610  He even has video of it. 

Either way, the key will be getting and keeping the track alignment just right. 

Steve

Lift out/up

Hey Steve, It's 4 fet long by maybe 8-10" wide, it is just wide enough that there is a switch towards the one end.  The only time it would be in there would be when I am running trains other time it would be out

alignment

To get good alignment, use a technique used to hang cabinets.  Cut a 1x4  of suitable length lengthwise on a 45 degree angle.  Mount one of the cut pieces to the end of the benchwork with the wide side facing out and up.  Mount the other side to the liftout with the long side facing out and down with the cut positioned for the best possible alignment.  Repeat for the other end. 

Position the liftout in place and pin with a duplex 16 penny nail to locate the liftout horizontally.  Now lay and cut the track.  The cut 1x4 will hold the ends of the benchwork in place relative to the liftout and the pin will position the liftout horizontally resulting in good track alignment..

Terry

Need photos...

Terry,

Having never hung cabinets, I think I need some photos of the process you are describing. I'm having trouble visualizing it.

How 'bout a drawing

Couldn't find the photo.  This drawing shows one side of the liftout.  The horizontal positioning pin goes in the lower part of the liftout.  it also prevents accidental lifting.

Terry

Drawing works

Okay, now I see how it works - the 45 lets you interlock the two pieces. If I ever have to redo my bridge again, this could be very useful.

Thanks!

Alternate to plywood

Instead of plywood, I used OSB (Oriented Strand Board). It's the same material they typically use in houses instead of plywood nowadays. The fabricated joists are made from OSB as well. It's much cheaper than plywood (less than $10/sheet).

The only drawback I've found is that you can't spike nails into it, but I glue my track to cork roadbed so that's not a factor for me. 

My current layout uses mostly dimensional lumber (1x4s, 1x3s and 1x2s) because I was able to get a lot of scraps and cheap wood. My primary problem is that I don't have a table saw. When I built a prior layout, though, I had access to one and other than the legs, the entire benchwork was fabricated out of OSB ripped into 3" strips. I then used masonite spline following Joe Fugate's methods. The entire benchwork for a 10' x 20' room cost me $40.00.

I still used OSB as much as possible in the construction to avoid purchasing more lumber where possible.

Randy Hammill

Foam top

Steve, et al, have you on the track for bench work.

I wanted to share something I found doing the Litchfield Station layout (http://www.mrdccu.com/layouts/LitStn.htm).

Layout dimensions were about 17 x 2 feet. The bench work was 1 x 4 wood in 2 foot squares.

At the time, I was unable to purchase 2 inch blue foam locally, so I used two pieces of 1 inch held together with caulk.

You will notice that there is no mention of plywood. The foam was screwed DIRECTLY to the bench work. PLENTY strong that way and less expensive and lighter!

benchwork

I'm in the process now of building my own new layout. My last one was built useing 1x4" lumber in box sections that were bolted together to make it removable. That layout is now gone but I'm starting over in the same space with a bigger 2 level layout. I intended to use 1x4's like last time but after seeing the poor quality and high prices of 1x4's, I switched to 3/4" plywood in 3" strips also. I work on trade show booths and many of these are constructed useing 3" wide plywood strips as the framework. Walls built useing this method are very strong and light weight. I have a small Ryobi table saw that I use a lot but not for cutting 3" strips. It's pretty hard to feed a sheet of plywood into it and keep it all straight. I use a 8' straitedge clamped 1" away from the line I want to cut. My cordless Dewalt saw has exactly 1" between the blade and the edge of the base. This makes for pretty accurate cuts and I even use this method for building cabinets. I also rip my own 2x2's out of 2x4's since the 2x4's are a better quality than the firewood they try to sell as 2x2's. Poor quality lumber seems to be the norm around here since the houseing market crashed. My upper deck is only 18" wide max so I made my own wall brackets from a bunch of 3/4" hardwood I had left over from jobsights from my residential wireing phase. The cabinet guys used to leave lots of 3" wide and wider hardwood cabinet filler strips behind. I picked up all I could find and have built a lot of cabinets and stuff from their leftovers. I cut them in 18" long pieces and added 2 90 braces in the corner. I screwed them to the wall studs useing the leftover cabinet mounting screws that are 2 1/2" long, have a nice big button head, and were free. I will be useing 1" foam as a top surface (also new to me) and the structure is very strong and very light and thin so the thickness of the upper deck will not block the lower deck view.

OSB

OSB is not a direct plywood replacement.

When working with plywood cutting it to match dimensional lumber often yields material of the same strength.  3/4" ply cut to 3.5" in width will very closely match the properties of a standard 1x4.  It will not except edge nailing as easy however nor will OSB.  And in most cases the sheer strength in both directions is nearly identical.

OSB however cut to the same size 3/4" by 3.5" will have a slightly less strength on edge when compared to lumber.  Even worse is its strength when laid flat, OSB has nearly zero flex when laid flat it will break far earlier than ply or lumber.

Now taking into concern its benefits OSB and Ply are what we consider inert material as they dry they will not bow, crook, wain, warp or twist.  There will be a tendency for thinner ply to bow, particularly if cut against its face grain.  If you took a bundle of 1" #2 pine and a bundle of 3/4" ply cut to the same length and dimension, stored together over a long period of time.  You will still have straight ply, where as there is no guarantee on the dimensional lumber.

The draw back to OSB is it's effect when exposed to water.  On a layout this is very little concern unless you are using real water for your features.  The concern here would be long term storage of modules in a storage unit basement or garage where slight flooding or standing water may damage the material.

Taking all that into account I would still consider using OSB in modules or dominos.  One just has to take into consideration it's properties when designing the modules.  For one I would add more cross members.  Two I would take into account it's inconsistent thickness. This is particularly important for modules that need to match other modules, like in N-track and Free-mo.  However if one uses a standard Free-mo end cap there isn't much concern either. Finally I would use a good quality glue I prefer good old Titebond but your mileage may vary. I would use this along every joint and hold the joint with 1 1/4" brads. Brads won't work when using 1/4" OSB However 3/4" crown staples work wonderfully.

As a contractor and carpenter I use OSB all the time and as it turns out have tons of scrap due to the nature of construction.  I wouldn't hesitate to use OSB depending on how it was to be used.  However in those such case plywood would be it's replacement.  Dimensional lumber still has it's place however in my opinion it's very limited.

Another product I've considered is MDO, MDF seams to have a niche but MDO is essentially plywood with a  veneer of MDF.  This gives you the strength of ply while having the workability of MDF.  I think MDO would be a great replacement for equal sized ply as sub-roadbed.  The downside is cost.  Depending on location it's also still possible to get exposure rated MDO as it used to be used in road signs.

Cheers

Nice write up Jeremy

That was a very good write up on OSB.  Thanks for the info.  I would (no pun) have not considered OSB for this application.  I'm looking at another temporary layout and will consider OSB next time

Steve

This is a great thread!

I have really enjoyed this thread.  Very helpful and practical!

Free wood and drywall......

........ can be found at construction sites in the dumpster. Not always, not all is good, but for the price... You will not believe how many different brand new construction materials end in there. Look for new construction projects. Ask for permission and do not make a mess.

Check also the free craigslist ads.