Breaking Ground

It's been a while since I posted, and the reason for that is that I was getting all my materials together to start construction. The major holdup was the ceiling tiles.

Like Jim Six in Model Railroad Planning 2010, I'm using ceiling tiles for my roadbed. However, I don't need pristine tiles (I'm just going to shave them down and cover them with paint anyway) so why would I want to pay full price for them? I asked at the local Lowe's what they do with damaged tiles, and the guys said they sell them for pennies on the dollar. So I waited, checking the clearance bin each time I went in. About a week or so ago, there were 5 cases sitting there in various level of distress. One case had only one tile in the package that was damaged minimally; the rest were perfect. I got them for 50% off. Not exactly my idea of pennies on the dollar, but certainly cheap enough. I also had to run around looking for the right size T-nuts for the wheels. I wasn't paying $3.50 each for stainless steel, but no one seemed to have the galvanized in stock. I finally located some, still stainless, but appreciably cheaper than Lowe's. I bit the bullet.



In the meantime, I also had to solve the problem of how to support my portable benchwork. If you'll remember from the Planning and Pondering post, it was really important to me to be able to move the layout around the basement.

I've done a bunch of reading on layouts built using hollow core doors as their base, but in each case, they were meant to be permanent, or at least stationary. So I had to get creative. What I came up with was a way to reuse the legs from the old layout and add wheels.

But I had two problems:

1. How to make sure that the two doors attached at the ends remain stable and not prone to bending or buckling at the joint in the middle, since I'm using a minimal number of legs. 
2. How to attach the legs so that the assemblies won't fold, move, or tilt, since there is very little material in the middle of the door to use as bracing or support.

The good news on both of these is that the layout won't be bearing a lot of weight. The base of hollow core doors will be supporting 2 inches of pink foam insulation, and one to two inches of ceiling tile. On top of that add some styrene, plastic structures, some scenery material, backdrop & fascia, and there really isn't a lot there. So long as no one takes to leaning on it!

The three photos to the right show how I solved the problems.

To solve the support issue, I braced the top and sides of the doors with 4" plates. This removed a lot of the motion, but I wasn't convinced. So, to shore it up, I braced the bottom side with a length of 1x4.

For the leg assemblies, I used 2x3s on end attached to the edges of the hollow core doors with 3" screws. I went with that length screw because I wanted them to go as far into the 2x3 as possible while minimizing splitting problems. I put some screws in the middle of the door as well, despite the fact that the only thing there is two very thin layers of luaun plywood. I figured it couldn't hurt. 

I was only partially successful with avoiding splitting. On the first 2x3 I attached, it split immediately. It was then that I realized I'd forgotten to drill a pilot hole. Lesson learned.I was still able to use it though, I flipped it over and used the other edge (see left).

Last night, after some leg height adjustments, I was able to take everything off the saw horses. I now have a roughly 13 foot rolling benchwork assembly, which will handle most of the long straight stretch of Wicomico St. (See the track plan.)

The next step is to figure out how to attach the 2'x4' module to the end to allow the spot for Ellicott Engineering.Then the foam goes on, the tiles go on and I can lay some track. I'll bring you up to date on that next time. Until then...