Summer Shunting Shelf Project

[M.C. Fujiwara]

My nine-year-old daughter & I are building an N-scale shelf switching layout for the summer.  Even though layout design is one of my trades, my daughter brushed aside my ideas & jumped on Byron Henderson’s “Alameda Belt Line” http://www.layoutvision.com/gallery/id32.html, a 1’ x 6’ shelf designed to fold in half for portability. 

She does have good taste: the design includes a long runaround to facilitate switching an oil company, wharf, team track, and a large fruit canning industry, with off-layout traffic transferring by carfloat and an interchange with the Southern Pacific line.

She also likes the local: Alameda, near Oakland, California, is a short car ride away from us, so it looks like she’s picked up on Dad’s San Francisco Bay Area pride, too.

I redrew the design for Atlas Code 55 track & for the Fast Tracks templates I use to hand lay turnouts, added one more siding to service a brewery (Dad gets thirsty), and renamed the industries for fun or based on local lore:



Having moved on average once a year for the past 11 years, we wanted to keep the hinged design for portability, but we also wanted to have structures on the layout.  My brilliant brainstorm (if I do say so myself), was to insert a 3” piece between two sets of hinges and a 3” backdrop / vertical support on the far left of the layout: now, instead of pancaking, the shelf wraps into a box with a 3” gap between sections, an interior space for structures & scenery.

[cont.]

[M.C. Fujiwara]

Benchwork

The shelves are ½” MDF cut from one 2’x4’ piece.  The three sections are not of equal width: the left (“base”) section is 12”x36”, the center is 11 ½”x3”, and the right is 11”x36”.  This allows the permanent attachment of 4”-tall strips of 1/8” masonite (cut from scraps salvaged off a previous layout, but could come from a single 2’x4’ sheet).

Here’s the basic benchwork, stretched out:



There are 1” MDF strips under each section edge, with four adjustable 7/8” furniture feet at each corner of each 3’ section.

Spray-painted the backdrop flat dark grey primer, and the boards Krylon ultra-flat khaki.

I constructed a 6”x7” box out of scrap masonite & MDF to house the DC power pack:



A roof with detailed parts will fit over it for photography.  A masonite front cover with DCC terminal can also be screwed on to the box.

The Oil Tanks are 4” & 2” ABS caps.  The large tank, at 2 1/2” high, will be permanently attached to the layout.  The two smaller tanks are removable, and serve the dual function to cover the front two pairs of hinges:



A removable power house will cover the back pair of hinges.  Those three structures should be the only non-permanent buildings on the layout: all others are flats, low relief, or positioned to not get hit by the backboard or any other structure.

I laid a small section of track over both joints, and then cut the rails when the gorillaglue cured.  The Dedeco ultra thin blade cuts as thin as a jeweler’s saw (or seems like it!), and having the hinges on top actually lifts the track up, preventing any crimping or squishing of rails.

I installed a handle on the bottom of the right section, and a latch on the left, so:



When folded up, it’s a 1’x3’x4” box that’s easily carried.

You can see the bus wire that runs the length of the bottom & through the end-strip supports.  Feeder wires are connected with suitcase connectors.  Should I want to mount this as a shelf, I will need to place foam (like for weather-proofing windows) on the brackets to take up the wire space & still support the boards.

[cont.]

[M.C. Fujiwara]

Track

One of the goals for this layout is to do as much ourselves as we can, or at least use up much of the train stuff I’ve accumulated over the past couple years.  We’re using Atlas C55 flex track and building our own turnouts using ME C55 rail on PC board ties.  We use Fast Tracks printable templates as guides, but adjust to our needs.  Given the close position of many turnouts, I tried to build as many as fixtures as I could:



The addition of the brewery required a crossing (between two turnouts) that started curving immediately after, so got to try out building a crossing for the first time:



Turned out pretty well.  Did it rather quick with a lot of eyeballing (& NMRA gauging).  I’ll build a better one next time.

In a great moment in father/daughter bonding history (no CA involved!)(except the state we live in!), I taught her how to use a soldering iron to build turnout:



For the first couple we used the jig I’ve had collecting dust for a couple years.  Then she had to test it out with a truck:



So now she knows how things are glued or soldered together, about hard & soft metals, and why not to touch the soldering iron tip, even if it’s to show your daughter why not to touch the soldering iron tip.


[cont.]

[M.C. Fujiwara]

Track (pt.2)

We gorillaglued the pc board ties of the turnout fixtures to the MDF base for added stability, but used caulk for the flex.  Having no foam in which to push T-pins, we used canned veggies to weigh down the track while curing.

Drilled feeder holds, soldered to rails & used suitcase connectors underneath, and then took the SP NW2 for a spin:



There it’s on the wharf deck we built out of pcboard ties and 1/32” x 3/64” basswood strips.  After that photo, we painted the pcboard ties to match the stained wood.

A thin layer of Magic Water coated the thin strip off the wharf as well as filled in the carfloat quay.  After we install the permanent carfloat, we’ll use Modge Podge to create wave / ripple effects.

And the most incredibly exciting part of N-Scale model railroading: tie replacement!



The PC board ties are slimmer than Atlas flex or even the ties Fast Tracks sells, so I slip 1/32” x 3/64” basswood strips (after a dip in my “Big Jug O’ Stain”) under the turnouts.  Tedious.  Luckily, “family bonding” also includes a Chopper II, thin strips of white glue between rails, tweezers, and my daughter sharing the joys of tie replacement:





Busy hands are happy hands!

[cont.]

[M.C. Fujiwara]

PAINTING

We masked off everything but the track, made sure the turnout points were covered, and then, working in thirds, we sprayed the rails with Floquil Grimy Black, scraped the railtops with bits of wood, and then brightboyed the heck out of it:



It was such a sunny, hot day that by the time we pulled off the masking, the paint was dry!



Right now, we’re going back and touching up the points & the ties around them with Grimy Black & a small brush.

That’s it for now.

Next on the agenda:
--building & installing the carfloat
--building, painting & installing the long “Bella Fonte” fruit cannery flats along the back left
--build the power-pack roof-cap
--start figuring out streets & ground cover
--keep practicing running those trains & shunting those cars!

Thanks for slogging though a bunch of posts & pictures.
Hope to have more before school starts in a couple weeks.
Cheers!

[packers#1]

I love the cover for the powerpack  layout looks good as well, fun design

[sirenwerks]

Excellent work MC! I so look forward to more. Makes me wish I had kids though, I could put them to work building trackwork. Hey, maybe I can teach the cats to...

[Zox]

That's a lovely bit of engineering on the fold-up.

[Chris333]

Nice work.

How was it building that crossing?  I've never built one.  Do you bevel all the rails where they meet?

[M.C. Fujiwara]

Nice work.

How was it building that crossing?  I've never built one.  Do you bevel all the rails where they meet?

Some rails were bent, others filed.

Started like this:



The top & bottom (which is also one of the frogs for each turnout) were bent, while the sharp angles at the sides are separate rails filed & soldered:



I completed the crossing interior first.

Each center section of rail also has two guard rails coming off it.  I made each center section out of two pieces of rail: a bent guard & center (filed on end), and one guard (filed).  I soldered the guard/center piece in first to make sure it was lined up with its own rail & even with the opposite outside rail.  Then I soldered the last guard rail in.  I didn't do a super-exact filing job: usually more than necessary & filled it in with solder.

Here's a closer view of the center:



After finishing the crossing, I went back & filled in the two turnouts (having already filed the notches for the points at the beginning!;) )

It turned out ok.

Cutting the iso gaps was not fun: everything's so close together the Dedeco disk cut a little bit into neighbor rail.
And one of the middle ends popped off.
Tried to solder it back but it's just too small.
I'll try again, maybe, but locos & cars move over it 95% fine.

[dnhouston]

Very nicely done!  And thanks for the step-by-step on the crossing.

[Chris333]

I usually cut the frog gaps from the bottom that way when the Dedeco's kick the close-by rails it won't be as bad. It will hit the base instead of the head. I get to try some crossings soon...

[Dave Schneider]

M.C.

Thanks for the great thread on this project. Very interesting project and it is great to see your daughter hard at work. I am convinced that kids today are happy to be involved with projects if they are given a role. I know that my kids seem to enjoy dinner more once they got to the age where they could cut and cook things with me.

One quick question. I love how you handled the joints. I had been contemplating soldering my rails to screws at my module edge, but the Gorilla glue looks like it will do the trick. I see that both you and Chris use Dedeco cut off blades. Which one do you use? What tool do you use these with...Dremel? Do they need a special mandrel?

Thanks again for your contributions. They are really interesting.

Best wishes, Dave

[Chris333]

The Dedeco's I have come with a mandrel and they are .009" thick  (think they are called "Ultra") which is just about the same as a Zona saw.

http://www.dedeco.com/browse/107/NM-Slims-Ultra-009s/

I see they have "Dura 009" wonder if those are stronger?

[M.C. Fujiwara]

So far the gorillaglue is doing pretty well.
I gorillaglued about 4-5 ties to each side of the cut, and all of the pcboard ties on all the turnout fixtures (which I soldered together as one big fixture).
MDF is pretty porous: its really just dust compacted super tight, it seems.
So the gorillaglue has a pretty firm grab.

I go bananas for gorillaglue.

The difference between my hinged joint & joining two modules together is that my "ends" never bang together, the rails never get wiggled or touch each other.  So there's no shear forces at work.

Using MDF, I'm trying to keep screws to a minimum, as they work loose easier than ply.
For the hinges, I dropped some thick viscosity CA down the pre-drilled holes & let it soak for a sec before screwing in the hinges so the opening & closing wouldn't cause the screws to work the surrounding MDF into a powder.

I got the pack of 25 "ultra thin" Dedeco cutting disks (same as Chris333) which are .009 thick.
Didn't come with a mandrel, but they fit on the Dremel one fine.

Very thin!  Very easy to break!
I think I destroyed about 3-4 before I actually cut something right
Some by just putting down the Dremel at the wrong angle: now I take the disc & mandrel out after I use it.

Chris: didn't even think about cutting from below.  DUH.  I'm a dolt.  Thanks for the tip!