displaying your booty.

Wood with grooves for track.  Front is 1x2, roughly, with shallow slot on top and very deep slot on bottom.  Acrylic sheet goes up into the big slot, then down into the shallow slot.  More for earthquakes than for dust, although it does offer dust protection.

You could always get hold of a used china cabinet. Another option would be used commercial display cases.

With a relatively good Air conditioning system and dust filter, I dust the display maybe once a year.   Commercial extruded aluminum shelving.  There are several suppliers.
Slideshow.  Click to link.




Glen Snyder Display Systems. Click on the underlined phrase to link.

here are my display cases off of da  Bay!

 Unfortunately due to close proximity of a fireplace insert, a fully enclosed cabinet is a necessity to prevent dust buildup.

Mark, have you considered a glass hearth door set to cut down on the dust?

Mark, have you considered a glass hearth door set to cut down on the dust?

Yes, My fireplace insert [which is a wood burning stove without the legs] has a glass door. You still have to clean out the ash once a week as well as reload the unit every 4-5 hrs. This creates tiny ash particles that spread everywhere! [esp when the unit has a blower that is constantly turning to keep the heat moving. Also the ceiling fan in the living roomn where the insert is doesn't help either.

i will second a favorable opinion on this option.  it isn't the least expensive, but i doubt if you could get much denser shelve spacing and i will also vouch for its weight capacity.  i have a mixture of live steam and standard/ wide gauge locomotives only on a few six foot sections and they are rock solid.

Mike, cats meow, just what I looking for. I'll build a dust case around them. maybe even put a positive filtered  air flowinto the caase to lessen dust.

Phill 

Then again, with O being the King of all scales, maybe displaying your booty is something else entirely......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQJgAPTX7OY

Shake-Shake-Shake.  Exactly what I was thinking

Mike, cats meow, just what I looking for. I'll build a dust case around them. maybe even put a positive filtered  air flowinto the caase to lessen dust.

Phil

The "positive" filtered air flow would be unnecessary. Since the door is closed, the only dust accumulation would be when the door is opened [ and not much gets in thereanyway]. the only dust accumulation would be on the glass door and that's easily remedied with a dust cloth and windex.

Have you tried Craigslist?  A lot of times you can check the "for sale" forum and find display shelves, lawyer's bookcases, and similar. 

The "Free" section is also worth a look, you never know what treasures await.

Many times the price is right!

I think we need to "rethink" the subject title of this post.   

Larry

Naw, rethinking is not an option. Pirates booty, a chest full of expensive stuff. My trains, your trains. everyones trains. No good in a stinkin box.

Phill

More booty here than you can shake a peg-leg at! Crosscut saws from the 1800's, electric fans from the 20's to the 50's, a retro tube stereo stack and of course, trains galore. I realize that you guys want to cut down on dust and gunk build up and the first step to that is a clean furnace filter. After that you may want to put the little after-filters in your heat registers. Just with proper maintenance of your furnace to start and those little filters, I'm only dusting my house once a month. Past that, cabinets with sealing glass sliding doors would work very well to keep things out of where they don't belong.

YARRRRRRRRR

My step son and I built this display case. We cut grooves for the trains. It took me a while to figure where to put the grooves and what size they should be so that they would be compatible with both 2 rail and 3 rail trains. I did all the staining and the trim work. It still wound up costing almost $500 for materials.

Phil - that is a thing of beauty.  I sympathize - my grooves have to accommodate 5' gauge and 4'6" gauge.

Phil, Nice job but it looks like you have too many NYC passenger cars, we need to talk.

Phil, I did one like that 3 decades ago for my HO and used heavy glass shelves with glass sliders like yours. The caged trains stayed pretty clean but I was in town with pavement.Now in the country with dirt and dust streets. I want to cover the wall and thinking with those alum. shelves mentioned before and a paneled glass cover I can then appreciate my trains a lot more than them sitting in their boxes.

I happen to now use a breathing machine for sleep apnea which puts out a small amount of positive pressure. I was thinking I can find another on ebay and use it to have that positive air in the case as it is filtered air. In fact the one I use isn't that big and I could mount it so it is hidden enough in the case. But it will be more than a year off now as we decided to move somewhere a little cooler.  

Thanks for the kind words guys. I learned a lot building this case and the next one will be even better. Phill, I don't have glass sliders. I just cut grooves in the wood for the glass to move. I didn't think about sliders. Definitely, something to consider for the next time. And yea, the glass is heavy. I like your idea about positive air pressure. So Far I haven't had any dust on the trains and I certainly don't want any. Every train in that case except for the passenger cars and the SF diesel were disassembled and washed before going in the cabinet. That was a lot of work but it is the only way I know to get the dust off when it is that bad.

Phil:

That case looks great! Did you cut into the wall or take advantage of a built-in recess?

I found the cabinet I built some 30 yers ago. I just needed to look up as it sat on top of a storage wall unit. I put these channels for the glass to slide in and used BBs for the glass to slide easy. I used tempered glass for shelves, but in HO more than good. with the mirror behind it helped one appreciate the models.

To recall all the nice models that once passed through that case,  855s U50Cs, U50d SD40s, big boy. one time tenshodo GN steam, r2 s2 f8. Ah, them were the days. And then in 2000 O scale happened after a decade of nothing. Oh, Them spray cans of air for dusting of computers for dusting models on shelves at least once a month

Phill  

Matt, thanks for the kind words. I didn't cut into the wall. When my step son and I built the walls I had him leave an open space. It is about slightly less than 8' by a little less then 3'. I did make as mistake. We should have a made it a few inches higher or the future layout will cover up the bottom shelf. So I had to lower the layout a little. The height of the future layout will be 43" which I have come to be happy with.

phill, very nice case. I like the mirror idea.