My last post was meant to introduce the topic and provide a brief history of the project so far. Today I want to start with the real meat of the project, the work being done at the new location. This post will be an overview of the plan for refitting the layout into the new room. 

The New Location

The original location was in one side of a two car garage. The room we are moving to is located above one stall in a three car garage so the space is roughly the same size and shape, but is slightly bigger. 

The new room is rectangular with only a couple minor anomalies to deal with. Just inside the door there is a roughly 2’ x 13” section of wall that sticks out into the room (it contains vent pipes that run up to the roof) that we have to work around. Also, one corner of the room has a mitered corner to facilitate the entryway downstairs.

Here’s the room’s floor plan:

In the lower right you can see the angled corner and vent wall we need to build around. Also, a bit unfortunate is that the single largest window in the house is located in the center of the far wall (across from the door). This is a southern facing window that gets full sun each day. Steps will need to be taken to reduce its impact on the room. It can get quite hot with the doors closed (a necessity when the railroad is built because I have two cats). Also, direct sun on the layout will be hard on the scenery. Lastly, my true passion is around model building and I want to control the lighting of each scene. Tough to do in full sunlight.

The window also adds a couple constraints to the plan. 

First, I need to maintain access to it. The section of benchwork that will cross the window will need to be removable.

Second, this room has been mostly closed and used for storage for the past few years while I wasn’t doing any modeling. Now that I am working in there again, I have discovered a couple weather related problems with the window. We can have some fairly extreme wind and rain out where I live and it appears that the frame has leaked a little. The sill needs to be replaced. That being said, in a year or two there is a good chance we will be installing new windows throughout the whole house (just replaced the roof this year and my annual maintenance budget only goes so far) so for the time being I am leaving this alone. I just need to be certain that enough access is left that the window can be replaced without the need to remove any benchwork when the time comes.

On the plus side, the new room is slightly larger. Not a lot but given that we are working in N scale a little bit goes a long way. 

In the garage the layout ran down one wall and then did a lap around the peninsula. In the new location we are a bit wider and have usable walls on three sides. Now we run around three walls and then traverse both sides of the peninsula - on two levels. Roughly we have 267 linear feet to run track (about 8 scale miles).

In addition to more linear feet, we also have a bit more square footage. In the garage the section along the wall was 13" deep and the modules on the center peninsula were 10" deep. In the new location we can do 19" deep along the walls and 16" deep on the peninsula while still having 42+ inch aisles.  

Given the changes in size, the decision was made to build all new benchwork rather than try to add on to the existing modules.

The New Benchwork

The current plan is to build benchwork around the walls and then a two sided peninsula into the middle of the room. All of this will be double decked and there will be a helix in one corner to traverse levels.

A number of years ago I heard about someone who had come up with a rather clever (I thought) idea for doing fast and easy benchwork, the Nirvana for all model railroaders. The idea was to use shelf brackets mounted to the walls to support the benchwork and then use hollow core door slabs as the benchwork itself. This idea has a lot of appeal to me and we decided to use this method here.

The type of bracket we are using can be found at The Container Store http://www.containerstore.com. Home Depot sells some that are very similar. There is a slotted rail you mount to the wall and shelf brackets you fit into the slots at the desired height. 

One advantage of using this method is you can adjust the height a bit if needed. It allows you to test drive heights and see what is most comfortable for you. Granted, you can only adjust in 2” increments but that is still better than nothing. Also, if you install longer rails that extend below the layout (or above), you can easily add storage shelves as needed.

When using shelf brackets you need to be aware of a couple things. First, don’t assume that the brackets are square (will mount perfectly perpendicular to the wall). Based on the type and manufacturer, most brackets I found are NOT square, either by design or due to poor quality control.

These particular brackets are very well made and very consistent (you don’t need to worry about significant variance from bracket to bracket). That being said, this particular bracket does have a deliberate cant built in. I use the 14” brackets and each bracket is made such that point A is ¼” lower than point B in order to put a slight backward cant to the shelves.

It’s not a huge issue but something to be aware of. I will deal with this when I mount the door slabs.

Speaking of which, we use  the 30" and 36" sizes of these doors from Home Depot:

The upper deck on this layout will be 19” deep and the lower deck will be 15” deep. The lower deck is shallower because it is too hard to reach (and see) to the back of the lower level if it is too deep. The 15” depth works well and standing a “normal” distance from the layout and casually looking at the lower level, your sight line just reaches the back edge before you need to bend down in order to see under the upper deck facia.

Granted, this is all a function of how high you decide to build everything. We were fortunate that we had the work in the garage prior to this so we were confident about the heights and spacing we liked. If you are considering building a double deck layout I recommend you mock up some test benchwork and make sure the heights and depths work for you before you get too far and discover you can't see or reach something. 

Here is a cross section of what our benchwork looks like along the walls and some dimensions to give you the idea:

The door slab provides the foundation and then the plan is to add a 1” layer of foam on top of that. This will deaden the sound of running trains and provide the ability to do a little bit of scenery “below track level”. Given this is N scale 1” will provide enough for our needs.

One thing about using shelf brackets and making the layout double decked, you really need to think about heights and clearances. In our case our goal is to build a layout that is fun to operate. We are really focusing on ease of access for operation and maintenance. There are constant compromises being made to balance height from the floor, depth of the layout (front to back), sight lines, and the thickness of the layers (benchwork needs to be strong enough to support everything but light enough you don’t need a 6” facia to hide it).

This is one of the main reasons the door slabs are ideal. They are strong, light, and provide a perfectly uniform flat surface as a foundation. Some people might question the cost. In the pic above you see the online price. I walk in to my local Home Depot and buy them off the shelf. For the upper deck (19” deep) I buy the 36” bi-fold doors. For the Lower deck (15” deep) I buy the 30” bi-folds. Each package consists of two slabs. I pay slightly more than the online price. I paid $54 for the last 30” and that gets me two slabs that are 79” tall. Each package basically gives you 158” (13’) of ready to mount benchwork that is perfectly smooth, square, and true.

I have heard some folks voice concern over the stability of a hollow core door over time. Also concerns about the thin door skins ability to hold up over time while bearing the weight of stuff stacked on top (and bearing the weight of everything  while sitting on the metal shelf brackets). Well, it turns out I accidentally did a long term stress test on just that. 

Roughly 15 years ago I was heavily involved in model railroading and was considering building a layout. I had just heard about the door method and wanted to try it out. So, I went out and purchased a 36" bi-fold door. This gave me two 18" slabs to test.

I fastened two shelf rails to my wall, inserted the brackets and set the slabs into position. Soon after this I had some life changes that resulted in my stepping away from model railroading. My train room became more of a storage area and the door slabs on the brackets were used as shelves.

So, for the past 10+ years, the door slabs were holding quite a bit of stuff, sitting on bare metal shelf brackets. After all that? They did not warp, sag or deform in any way. Also, the skins held up and none of the brackets poked any holes. And all this supporting much more weight than will be there when doors are actually supporting model railroad. So, given this, I am confident in their ability to hold up over time.

For support, we ended up mounting shelf brackets on 32” centers. This guaranteed at least 2 brackets per door slab.
 
 

In the cross-section view earlier you can also see something labeled “skybox” on the lower level. This is a simple 3” inch deep box framed in plywood and faced with 1/8” Masonite. It serves two purposes. First, it provides  a 3” spacer so the front edges of the 15” lower deck door slabs align with the front edges of the 18” door slabs on the upper deck. Second, it provides a nice flat uniform surface for the lower deck skyboards that will not warp.

That's it for now. In the next post I'll start talking about mounting the door slabs to the shelf brackets.