Progress on The Shelf

[chuck geiger]

Looks grand Ed, I love the shelf idea with foam on wood or just foam on shelf brackets. It eliminates
building a cabin to support a peanut, For an industrial design like your are doing of Baltimore, I love
all the open space, that can become urban scenery or simple spurs off to industries.

[tom mann]

Am I missing something or is this really just 2" foam on shelf brackets?

No man, don't you see it?!

Ed, my 2" foam on brackets has not warped in almost 1 1/2 years.  But, the support joists are a lot closer together. 

My advice?  Just spend 10 bucks on 1x2 pine and build a simple box frame.  It'll still be lightweight and fast (as you say) but provide a tad more structural heft.  Think about this:  if you open that window all that foam will blow across the room.

[rswinnerton]

Ed,
Invest in the wood to box in your foam. Remember that most of your friends are clumsy oafs and will wantonly distroy foam once Yuenglings are applied.

Unless you want to simulate earthquakes...
Russ

[sirenwerks]

Russ has got a great point. We all have lush capacity.

[chuck geiger]

Foam in foam.............

[chuck geiger]

No man, don't you see it?!

Ed, my 2" foam on brackets has not warped in almost 1 1/2 years.  But, the support joists are a lot closer together.  

My advice?  Just spend 10 bucks on 1x2 pine and build a simple box frame.  It'll still be lightweight and fast (as you say) but provide a tad more structural heft.  Think about this:  if you open that window all that foam will blow across the room.

You will have a solid frame to connect fascia to.





Bruce Petty's awesome benchworkj for his LA SP layout. I built
my last layout using his design and the boxes drop into back
block of the bracket. http://lariverrailroads.com/newshelf1.html

[DKS]

^ That's how I (eventually) built the frame under the all-foam WR&N IV. I added an L-shaped trim strip to the ends of the 1x2s on the shelf brackets and used it to store rolling stock that I'd swap out on the layout. I also glued a Foamcore facia to the front of the foam to hide the edge of the foam and the frame. The Foamcore was then covered with woodgrain Contact plastic shelf paper to create a nice finished surface. Control panels were secured to the foamcore, and I carved out areas behind them in the foam with a hot wire tool. The knobs along the top edge of the facia are pushpins soldered into K&S brass tubing, which actuates the turnouts. The long black stripe is a strip of Velcro on which to hang throttles. I also added Velcro to the backs of test meters and other similar devices so they could be hung wherever it was convenient, and they'd be easy to read while I was working on electrical gear on the layout.

[Dave V]

The long black stripe is a strip of Velcro on which to hang throttles. I also added Velcro to the backs of test meters and other similar devices so they could be hung wherever it was convenient, and they'd be easy to read while I was working on electrical gear on the layout.

I do the Velcro thing too, for throttles and the skirt.  I've also Velcroed car card boxes to the layout.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I've done some more tonight, including rigging up the lighting for the center (although I think I want to get a few more strings, it's still pretty dark):






And mocked up the scene at the one end with some of the trees from the kidney:







And a shot of underneath, showing how the brackets are supporting the foam.

[Zox]

"The stars at night, are big and bright,
Deep in the heart of Ed's basement!"

[tom mann]

Ed, some of these photos look surreal...maybe due to the trains on cork, christmas lights strung randomly, trees kinda thrown about, magic marker on pink foam... ;D  You ok? ;D

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Lol, yep, I'm good. You're just getting a look into the "process".

Remember this?

[lock4244]

So, model railroading IS FUN!

[Sokramiketes]

This thread is a joke, right? 

[squirrelhunter]

If the objective is to get trains running ASAP, I can see skipping lots of woodwork and just using foam. If the sections are short with a good number of supports, they will stand up to a lot. The thick foam in short lengths is pretty tough to bend or break. Honestly, the only times I have seen insulation foam in any application warp is if it was a long, thin section or if it had too much weight placed on it over a long period.

Everyone has limited time. Time spent building benchwork is time not spent running trains or building scenery or upgrading equipment. Some folks like building benchwork, or woodworking is their other hobby. That's fine. But I think some here are underestimating the durability of foam that is well supported, even if it isn't by a wooden fort.

I have to disagree with Lee about whether this is a real railroad- I think any layout that seeks to accurately capture some portion of real railroad operations acts like a real railroad. I think that unless you have a huge space or a very small prototype, the idea of modeling every step from interchange, through mainline haulage, to classification and final delivery requires lots of selective compression. Some prototypes lend themselves to this more than others.