My good friend and mentor George stopped by the other day to check on my progress. In the conversation, storage came up. My excess cars, the ones that don't fit on the hall shelving or the layout, are just in Rubbermaid tubs under the benchwork. Not readily available. He has his in drawers. Never too proud to steal a good idea, and having some drawers in the same hall cabinet as the shelves, I thought I would give that a try. I cut some 1/2" XPS to fit inside the drawers (42.5" x 15.5"), then cut kerfs into them to function as track (keeping the trucks aligned and the cars from hitting each other). First few cuts were on a scrap piece to get the right spacing, then ran a spreadsheet to plan all the final cuts. Part way thru cutting, I realized I could just flip the board around and make 2 cuts instead of just 1 each time I had to stop and adjust the fence. Finished drawer inserts in place, and then loaded with rolling stock. In the 4 top drawers, 48 cars put away yet readily available. Thank you, George!
Disclaimer, this is just an experiment. If I really like this (and currently pretty sure I do), I will at some point remake them with wood bases.
P.S. Easter egg in the earlier photos of the hall cabinet during construction. How many noticed it originally only had 6 drawers? Somewhere during that time period I changed the design and ended up with 8.