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BenchWork Construction For Model Trains |
Lionel Strang gets workin' on his railroad by starting with a solid foundation
by Lionel Strang
Before you can start "workin’ on the railroad," you’ll need to build some benchwork. I’ll share how I built the foundation for my HO Allegheny & Lackawanna Southern layout. I didn’t have many publishable photos from building my layout a dozen years ago, so I built and photographed a small mock-up section to illustrate my techniques.
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The girders rest on 1 x 4 base plates at each wall bracket. The plates give the girders greater stability. Click on the photo for more.
| | Design requirements
When designing my benchwork I needed a construction method that allowed me to start from a base level and work up. I wanted the fascia to be a minimum of 10" high for controls and track schematics where needed. I also wanted the scenery to drop below the minimum track height for rivers and other scenic depressions without complicated modifications. Rather than reinvent the wheel it seemed simpler to modify L-girder construction.
The base of my benchwork is 1 x 4 pine on its edge. Where necessary I overlapped two 1 x 4s for two feet using drywall screws and carpenter’s glue.
The 1 x 4 girder sits on a plate of 1 x 4 pine on each of the L-shaped wall brackets. The girders are very strong, transferring the load of the layout to each of the brackets. On some of my sections girders span ten feet between wall brackets.
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Use a carpenter's square and pencil to make sure the vertical supports for the risers are in line with each other. Click on the photo for more.
| | Risers are attached to the girders using 1 x 2 pine for the verticals and 1 x 4 pine for cross members to support the roadbed.
For most of my roadbed I cut the exact shape of the track contours from a plywood sheet and attached each piece to the risers. Most of the cross members extend to the layout edge so vertical supports can be installed for the fascia. This also allows me to install a shelf anywhere along the side of the layout for radios, uncoupling tools, and car cards.
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Cutting a piece of 1 x 4 to 16" gives you a great jig for easily spacing the risers. Click on the photo for a look at a completed section.
| | Risers are 16" apart, an ideal distance for 3/4" plywood roadbed. If there are higher elevations of track in the area I add more vertical supports and cross members on top of existing supports.
As you can see these construction techniques can be adapted to meet your particular requirements, allowing you to build benchwork to fit the space available, while being reasonably simple and fast to install.
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For more ideas I suggest How to Build Model Railroad Benchwork (Kalmbach) by Linn Westcott. There are plenty of great illustrations and ideas in this book. The benchwork for my railroad is complete and I still find myself referring to this book from time to time when someone asks for my help with their benchwork.
This article was first published in the November 2001 issue of Model Railroader magazine.
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The above articles is the property of and is
the copyright of Kalmbach
Publishing Co. |
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