Benchwork - Roadbed

Muskoka Steve's picture

Muskoka Central II Breaking Ground

Work on the new layout has begun.  Phase 1 is an area 12' x 13' and will contain a yard, engine facility and a few industries.  This room doubles as my home office and will be the workshop with my modeling desk and Airbrush booth.

Looking for layout lighting suggestions

I am in the process of building a new layout and am looking for suggestions for lighting.

RRKreitler's picture

The Fidalgo Island RR #10 – Installing the Lights – The False Start

At this point the lighting installation is 95% complete. The only remaining portion of the layout that needs lighting installed are the harbor modules where the car ferry will operate. That benchwork is fairly specialized and not built yet. It will be done later when I spend some time solely dedicated to finishing up the harbor area. The lighting for that section will be completed along with the benchwork.

This post covers all the lighting for the rest of the layout.

Nate's picture

Benchwork Update

The cabinets/bases are built. They will be stained and have doors added at a later date. The modules themselves need some more work. They do not lay flat as currently built with 2x4s, so I think I will rebuild them with L-girder frames. Not sure when I will get to that, holiday plans have my foreseeable weekends booked.

Thanks to everyone who has read and commented so far!

RRKreitler's picture

The Fidalgo Island RR #9 - Thinking About Lighting

While my job has been keeping me quite busy, the covid lockdown has kept me around home. The good news is the railroad is progressing.

It’s been a while since my last construction update. I was trying to finish up installing the lighting and that turned into a bigger adventure than originally planned.

Here’s the story in two parts. The first part is the why, the second part is the how.

Sheet roadbed

Assuming a flat railroad with little vertical scenery (an industrial switching layout) with a solid plywood layout surface, my question is what to cover that with for roadbed, so that once the track locations are finalized some of the roadbed can be easily cut away to allow for a bit of drainage, ballast profile, etc.  A 1/4" thick layer would be ideal.  Skipping the roadbed entirely, laying the track directly on the plywood, and making do with no below track level scenery is an acceptable option, so anything I pick for roadbed needs to be enough better than that to be worthw

MikeHughes's picture

HO “Bedside & Hinged” Switching Layout

I found the MRH site accidentally a few days ago while searching for Track Plans for a very small HO switching layout that I've decided to build while away from home working. Kind of cool that a Google Search got me here via a picture of a track plan on Pinterest! I have a tiny room/office at my away place in Vancouver where I stay with a family. I'm hoping by documenting this, it might inspire other space challenged modelers to get building.

Nate's picture

Design, benchwork, and some back story.

Finally have some free time with all my lumber bought and my new drill and impact ready to go...and need to have my car looked at. So I'll make another post while I wait for that before I go home and start building.

The layout will go in the living room, as I am in a one bedroom apartment. AND my fiancé is on-board with it, if for no other reason than that my train stuff takes up her side of the closet right now so I have to build it so I can move that into the cabinets the modules will sit on lol

Valence for Suspended Ceiling

So in doing a search, I didn't see much.  Maybe there's stuff out there but thought I would post for info.  I didn't want to tear into my ceiling tiles to hang a valence so I found some fairly cheap hooks on Amazon - about .50c/hook.  All it required was a wood frame to hold everything.  My plan is to hang vinyl flooring strips as the valence as I saw in Chris Adams' Post.  Mine is probably not the best way to do this but it's working for no

Eric H.'s picture

What's on Your Workbench - December 2020

Wow, it's December! I'll bet many of you started projects last month. Let’s see your workbench and layout progress as we kick off another month.

Eric

 

Eric Hansmann
Editor-at-Large, Model Railroad Hobbyist
Follow along with my railroad modeling:
http://designbuildop.hansmanns.org/


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