First Layout 12x12 (build thread)

Looks sturdy. Are you an engineer by trade? One of the really nice things about this design is that you won't bang your toes on table legs.

Keep us posted!

No I'm not. This design is almost straight out of the book by Westcott. If I did it over I would make all of the 1x out ripped plywood. But it does feel solid.

NICE WORK,  will you have a duck under or will it lift up.  The around the room layout is nice, I wish I would have went that route.  Keep posting updates.  Nick

Looks good Tim, best of luck. 

 

Andy

Look for another post asking for layout help. But yes some sort of crossing in front of the door is the plan. Since I'm thinking an upper and lower track I haven't seen any lift ups or tilt ups like that.

Good job Tim, the benchwork looks great!

 

I also have a 12x12, with a future 2x8 or so extension down the side for a longer yard:

 

 

The Wye will be a liftout or swingout bridge, right now all I have is the above, but no Wye (I have a 6-foot liftout bridge where the new Wye is located) and a shortened yard on the left.

 

The present 6-foot liftout bridge enables me to get inside the layout area.  I can run with or without it in place.  I had an island with a Wye on it in the top middle, but removed it.  With the island Wye gone, I can no longer reverse train direction, but once I extend the yard and add the new Wye that'll be back to normal.  The new liftout/swingout will be less than 4-foot long.

 

I have 072 curves on the outer loop and 054 curves inside.  Go as large as you can (I've got a re-design with 090 curves on the outside loop).

 

If you look at the plan you'll see a small run-around track in the upper right corner.  I put this in by accident, but it has been a tremendous help when switching cars.

Here's one that Dave Hikel designed for me, but I needed to re-use the track/switches I already had:

 

 

and here's one I played around with a while back:

 

 

No yard, but plenty of track to run a train on, plus some switching.  I could add the extension down the left side for the yard if I wanted.

I saw a layout on U-tube where they used big hinges to swing the track into the middle area, used a bolt lock to fix it into place when operating and wired a limit switch in to kill the power to that block when the swing was out as to not end up with a train pulling the swan dive off the cliff.

Bob, that plan is really awesome. I don't how people come up with these plans. It's there such a thing as track plan plagiarism? I'm about to be guilty. That upper left corner needs a hatch though?

That upper left corner needs a hatch though?

 

Yep, my arms aren't long enough to get over more than 30" with a layout height of 36".  I had a layout in my garage that was 48" high.  It looked nice but I needed 2 hatches to reach all the track.  Murphy's Law states that you WILL have an accident at the point farthest from your reach, so plan accordingly

It's Wescott for sure, and that makes it correct in my book!

 

Looks awesome tool man! From the looks of the top of that closet you've been planning this for a while.

Drodder, I've seen several of those too on this forum like Trainman2001 who encouraged me to use the lgirder corner blocks shown in the pics. We'll have to see once I get a little farther on just how much I would have to swing into the room to accommodate a gate. My gut is that something else would be better, but i don't know for sure.

 

So yesterday and today...

The front row of girders and most of the joists are in place. I like the way laidoffsick has a velcro'd fabric skirt hanging under the fascia and that is what I plan to do as well. Part of the "room acquisition negotiations" was that the room could still be used for storage. I would like to easily and cheaply hide it. Another thing I like was where someone on this forum had built wheeled carts for the stored items so that large areas could be pulled from under the layout when needed. I may try that as well. Anyway, I plan to use a hardboard fascia bent smoothly over the inside corners. Using cardboard templates of different radii and after several trial and error fittings, I settled on a 12 inch radius. I needed to work those out before I could cut the joists for the corners. Here's some shots of the template used and the final result. I'm happy with how it turned out. I should be able to smoothly fasten the hardboard to this. And I'm hoping I can bend 1/8" hardboard at this radius. Notice the marks that help me align the joists correctly.

 

While making the template, I need to mark the radius and using an old tape measure I went ahead and made several radius marking tools since I will need them while marking the track plan.

I used two 3/4" blocks of wood. They are about 5"x7" but it doesn't matter, just scrap. I screwed them together and drilled a perfectly plumb small hole exactly 1/4" from the edge.

I cut up and old tape measure into five pieces. For each piece I used a multiple of 10 as the starting point and cut 1" back and then rounded it with my tin snips. The I inserted it between the sandwiched plywood, pushing it through until the 1/4" mark  is just visible. In this shot the "zero" is 90" on the tape, so here you can see the 89 3/4" mark just showing. This puts the 90" mark right in line with the drill hole. 

I run the drill through the hole and voila... Repeat on the other end for the desired radius. Only took a few minutes to make them all. I made 12", 18", 21", 27", 30", 36" and 42". (some tapes have more that one radius). Works great with a sharpie.

A small nail for a place to hang them and I should be set.

 

I ran out of joists and felt done for the day. Here's where I'm at now.....

 

I may have overlooked it in Wescott's book, but couldn't find a recommendation on joist spacing. Any opinions? On one wall I have the at 10" apart, another at 10.5 another at 11". That's just how they spaced out evenly. I know one feature is that you can put joist wherever they work best for you, but what would be the maximum space between barring any other need?

 

Thanks for all the support out there.

 

Tim

Tim,

 

Nice benchwork. On page 42 in the far left column of Westcott's book (second edition), it states a preferred maximum 20" Spacing. I believe this is for an HO layout. I am using 16" spacing for 1x4 joists. You also should take into account what sub roadbed material you'll use. I'll be using 3/4" ply, and 1/2" Homasote on top of that, so I think the spacing should be sufficient. Good luck.

 

Andy

Thanks Andy. I've got two full sheets of 7/16 OSB and a full sheet of 1/2" plywood in the garage and I considered those. But I don't see how you can get a good bite with a screw into anything 1/2" thick unless you go all the way through and cut off the excess screw point. That seems like a lot of work. I think I should and will use 3/4" for the subroadbed. That mental bantering was what led me to wonder about the joist spacing. 3/4" could handle 16" spacing. But for now I've paused to choose a track plan. Originally I just wanted to get some track down and play. But now that I'm into it, I don't want to go too much further without the plan. I kinda put the cart before the horse because I wanted to plant the trainroom flag and cement my claim so to speak. :-). I still have a good starting point though and my cost has been minimal.