B&SW construction (update 3 Jan 2010)

The Birth of Benchwork



So lets start building a layout. The B&SW (above) has 4, 3'x5' sections to make the overall 6'x10' layout. Lumber is all 3/4 inch birch plywood ripped into 6"x8' strips.



8' strips were cut into 3' and 5' long pieces that were constructed into a box (pictured above)

Since this layout is my first I wanted to try a few different construction techniques. The B&SW has two different tops, half the layout has a 2" foam top and the other half has 1/2" plywood with 1/2" foam top.






The picture above gives you an idea on how I braced the 2" foam top, the other half is braced similarly just feature the plywood and foam top.




The top down view shows the other braces in the opening in upper right that will have the branch built at a 2" higher than the rest of the layout.





This picture shows the finish section with the hardware for the folding legs from Lee Valley Tools (PN 00T16.10). It also shows how close the legs are to touching to allow just enough clearance to allow them to close.





Final this gives you an idea of the simi-finish product, you can see the plywood top on the left and the foam only top on the right.




The final product is seen above with the foam top glued down.The fasttracks skeleton switches are on the layout as I start laying out the trackplan. The height of the layout is 50", this is based off of my Free-mo experiences and I think can give a more realistic viewing height.

Chris
Lancaster, CA

It's a new year and time for an update on the B&SW!

I spent a lot of time tweaking the track plan, about 25 different designs for the 5x9 and 16 with the 6x10 so I wanted to make sure that the plan transfered from screen to reality. The best idea I could come up with is to do a full size print of my track plan and use that to draw my track plan onto the bench work.



The image above shows the full size track plan laid over one of the sections of the layout.

The next problem is how to get this plan on the foam. The solution I came up with was using a tool I got from a pumpkin carving kit. The kit came with a small tool that used the transfer the face templates onto the pumpkin. The tool has a small wheel with spikes on it. The idea is the spikes are large enough to puncture through the paper and into the pumpkin.




As you can see above I used it the same way to pucture through the paper onto the foam.



The image above shows the result of this process which is and trace with a marker







The three images above shows the results (and as you can see my puppies were helping)



This shows the Campers tape that I am using for a sub-roadbed as shown in the Model Railroader how to book "How to Build Realistic Reliable Track"





These last two pictures shows the final roadbed product using homabed roadbed. This is now done for half of the layout. Now I just need to get the other half done.

~Chris
Lancaster, CA

Ahh... the last photo shows an issue of foam-wood frame construction (well i suppose it exists elsewheres)... that Ive seen enough on free-mo too! The roadbed dips down at the end there, where the roadbed transitions from foam to wood. This can become a fun issue with equipment later on - especially if the other side has the same problem.