Benchwork is the foundation of any good model railroad.  It must be stable, strong and (ideally) lightweight, plus it needs to use as few materials as possible to keep costs down.  With the prices of lumber fluctuating wildly over the past year, I opted to build my benchwork out of the materials I had rather than buying all brand new pieces.  Building from scraps offered a new challenge because I had to work within the sizes of the materials on hand.

The benchwork is the subject of today's blog update which can be viewed here.  For a summary, here's my methods and features of the benchwork for the Little Creek Mine.

My longest pieces were 48 inches long and the widest piece I could match as a pair was 13.5 inches.  Truth be told I was hoping to make the layout just a bit bigger, say 60 inches wide by 16 inches deep, but this was good enough.  Besides, with a footprint of 48 inches by 14 inches plus a 3 inch shelf the Little Creek Mine can fit in the backseat of most cars.  In my case, it will easily fit inside my suburban even with the third row seat installed.

Anyways, my needs for the benchwork were a bit unique.  I wanted a self-contained train layout that included both storage for the model trains and overhead lighting.  This would negate any need to rely on existing lighting in whatever area I set the layout up at and when traveling I could keep most of what I need inside the layout.

With that in mind, the design I came up with makes the most of the materials I had plus a piece of hardboard that I bought at Home Depot.  Materials used include:

• 1x2 dimensional lumber
• 3/8ths plywood scrap pieces
• 1/2 plywood scrap pieces
• 2x2 dimensional lumber
• 24x48 inch piece of Luan flooring plywood
• 24x48 inch piece of 1/8ths hardboard
• A few tongue and groove scraps

Plus I had some extra screws laying around, a box of trim nails for a nail gun, and a bottle of wood glue.  The bench-work was created over the course of two days while house sitting my mothers homestead.  The shop behind the house gave me access to a bunch of power tools which made the construction of the benchwork possible.

I plan to complete the benchwork phase of construction by making a couple of holes.  One will be a large, elongated access hole so that I can get at a hidden fiddle track along the side of the train layout.  The other holes that will be necessary include routing power and allowing trains to enter and exit the visible portion of the layout.

The entire package is to remain on the footprint it currently occupies, that means no fold outs or other tricks that break up the look of the benchwork while operating in the home.  In fact I'll be going as far as to build a custom bookshelf out of thick plywood in the future that this layout can plug into and essentially become a piece of furniture.  All my railroad books and magazines will serve as ballast keeping the shelf stable. However, I don't yet have a design for this bookshelf so that will be for another day.

Here are some other photos showing the details of construction:

The assembly above the the main frame of the benchwork.  It consists of two identical frames made out of 1x2 lumber fastened to plywood end plates with screws.  The the joints are glued together.  With the front and rear panels added, the whole piece becomes a torsion box, resisting warping or movement in any direction.

To support the scenery and track, a third 1x2 frame is added to the middle.  This is what the foam board rests on and will eventually be glued to.  In between the two lower 1x2 frame assemblies are the drawer pockets.  These had to be precisely cut and needed to be as identical as possible. The drawer pockets were made from tongue and groove pine boards that had the edges trimmed off along with 1x2s and 2x2 pieces.

The drawer glides use ball bearings and are self-latching.  This makes then quiet, vibration free, and more solid than the average drawer glides.  The trick was to precisely level each piece so that the drawers would rest inside their pockets at the same height and depth.  I managed to get everything accurate to within 1/16th of an inch, requiring only a few small adjustments to get everything close enough.

Finally this is the rear shelf that will be used as a fiddle track while at train shows.  The shelf is composed of a scrap piece of luan plywood that was used for the front frame plus some more tongue and groove scraps that form shelf brackets.  I thought about making this shelf a folding piece but instead opted to make it permanently fixed to the back of the layout.  If it wasn't more my radius requirements I'd rather have this shelf removed to make the whole layout a bit more finished-looking, but alas this shelf is needed for the trains to make a complete loop with a minimum of a 6 inch radius.

Thanks everyone for reading!