Glenn Snyder Display

The best.  My basement is full of them.  

Within the last week, I ordered several six-feet lengths of O-gauge display shelves for installation in my train room. Glad to hear there's no talk of "going out of business" because I may need more display shelves.

Mike Mottler    LCCA 12394

I think I have 50 or sol shelves. They are great

Good to hear.  I'm not too far into these yet but made my first purchase from them at York a few weeks ago. 

I hope to potentially do so again in the future!

-Dave

Happy to hear they're not quitting, I'll be needing more.

Excellent product and grate people to deal with.

They are very well made. I would eliminate the center rail though...when the roller drops down between the rails. It’s difficult to slide the wheels up onto the rails.

Those are great, I have quite a few of them also and when we end up with a new home in the Dallas area, I will probably need more of them also.  I'm very glad to hear that they will not be closing.  I have to agree with CJack about the middle rail, it can be a PIA.  Thanks for the great information.

Can't beat them!

Peter

Yep, seems there is always need for more shelves to display trains.  

Jesse   TCA

texastrain posted:

Yep, seems there is always need for more shelves to display trains.  

Jesse   TCA

Nice folks to deal with. 

Jesse, is that like 60 feet??? 😁

cjack posted:

They are very well made. I would eliminate the center rail though...when the roller drops down between the rails. It’s difficult to slide the wheels up onto the rails.

My complaint exactly!  The center rail is useless, it's just a major PITA to deal with.  I'm thinking if I do get more of this stuff, I'll find a way to hack off the center rail before mounting it!

Gotta love those Glenn Snyder aluminum shelves!

Question about those that use them.  Does the center rail have any effect on the rollers of powered units after long time storage.  I'd be afraid that after a long storage time it may leave an indent on the roller causing contact issues when the train was returned to service

Bossman284 posted:

Question about those that use them.  Does the center rail have any effect on the rollers of powered units after long time storage.  I'd be afraid that after a long storage time it may leave an indent on the roller causing contact issues when the train was returned to service

The third rail may be there to hold the contact rollers up, (somewhat out of sight).  You do notice flat spots on the traction tires, after setting on these shelves, for some time.   IMO.   Mike CT. 

I like the shelf with two grooves better. One of the guys made wooden shelves by just making slots on a table saw...at the proper gauge.

Mike CT, I have used the 3 rail display shelves for about 14 years and have had no problems with the rollers at all.  I do have a couple of locomotives with traction tires that I should probably move once in a while.  I hadn't thought about that.

CJACK,  Yes, I also have shelves on opposite wall made of wood with the wheels grove cut in with my table saw.  Works very well, along with allowing more view from top and move without "derailing" on the shelf.  My Snyder shelves are all 30ft long, need to extend another 6ft, minimum.

Jesse   TCA

The Snyder shelf (I think there are others too) would be great, but living in earthquake country (e.g., the left coast), I think having enclosed shelving is the best way to go.  I suppose one could build some sort of enclosure around the Snyder shelves, but by the time you fire up the radial arm saw to do that, you might as well cut the shelves too...  Another advantage of an enclosure is that it keeps down the need to dust.  I just haven't figured out (yet) how I want to build the front doors - hinged, sliding, full height, half height, individual sliders for each shelf or ??

Anyone else solved this problem?

gunrunnerjohn posted:

My complaint exactly!  The center rail is useless, it's just a major PITA to deal with.  I'm thinking if I do get more of this stuff, I'll find a way to hack off the center rail before mounting it!

Well you just need to add a milling machine to your collection  

I don't think a milling machine is in my future.

gunrunnerjohn posted:

I don't think a milling machine is in my future.

A small router table then John?

Well, I have a router table, but Routing off aluminum may be a challenge.  I may just have to consider different shelving options.

John: I use 1x4 lumber and run it thru the table saw for wheel spacing groves and paint to match. Been doing that for years. I dado out a vertical piece for each shelf and screw the vertical pieces to he wall studs.

RJT posted:

John: I use 1x4 lumber and run it thru the table saw for wheel spacing groves and paint to match. Been doing that for years. I dado out a vertical piece for each shelf and screw the vertical pieces to he wall studs.

Rick, if he follows your suggestion we'll never see a video of him running the aluminum thru a router!

I doubt you'll ever see the aluminum going through my router anyway.   I don't see that working out well.

Not having a way to easy dado the grooves, I'd have to consider other options.  Truthfully, I could probably just use butt construction, if it's secured to the joists, I doubt the ends will take a lot of strain.  The downside is I'd probably have screw heads on the end of the shelves.  I could also use 1/4" spacers for the shelve support at the end to form the slots.  That way I could just use my brad nailer and glue to attach them.

John - if you have a router table, you're all set (aren't you?).  Can't you just run the 1 x 4 (if that's your base of choice) on your table with the appropriate bit  to accommodate the width and depth of the wheel flange (~5/32 or 3/16" (?)) - then flip it around and make another pass for the other 'track'.  You could always just dig into your junk track box for track that you wouldn't use on a layout but would be fine for a display case...

Like you, I wouldn't run a router on Al -- an old junk carbide bit would probably handle the light cut needed, but just too many things to go wrong.  Its one thing to have a piece of wood kick back, but I wouldn't want to think about what might happen with a long piece of Al shelving.

The track slots I can do on my table saw, that has a kerf wide enough for the wheel slots.  I was thinking of the shelf sides with the dado slots, but the router table is an option.

If my router table isn't the most used tool in my woodshop, its a close second to my radial arm saw (I'll bet its first if one counted 'time of use' and not just number of times is gets turned on).  I've always found that in most cases, running dados or rabbets on a router table is much easier with the added advantage that it produces a nice square and flat bottom surface - as opposed to the ridges left by a stack of dado blades on a saw (which often means more work with a chisel or plane).

cjack posted:

They are very well made. I would eliminate the center rail though...when the roller drops down between the rails. It’s difficult to slide the wheels up onto the rails.

I agree, 1000%. If there was a choice, I'd opt for one without the center rail.  I have 4 walls of these shelving units and they are terrific...but there are times when not having that middle rail would be so nice....

gunrunnerjohn posted:

The track slots I can do on my table saw, that has a kerf wide enough for the wheel slots.  I was thinking of the shelf sides with the dado slots, but the router table is an option.

My friend used a shelf deep enough, just, to allow two sets of track kerfs, two tracks. It holds twice as many trains, but does not look like it if you are looking casually.

Chuck, I am actually considering that to maximize my storage.  Too many trains, not enough wall!

For those of you in earthquake country, take a look at how Ward Kimball, former Disney animator and one of TCA's early charter members, dealt with shelving.  His shelves were wood with track grooves and every foot or so along a shelf, he inserted a peg about and inch or two in height.  If the world began to "shake and bake" the pegs prevented his trains from falling off the shelves.  Ward had a world class collection .  I'm sure one would not have difficulty pulling up pictures of his train rooms either on the internet or in past editions of the TCA Quarterly.  For those of us in less volatile areas, Glenn Snyder's shelves are the best.  

I don't think SE-PA is earthquake country.  We have had a couple that rattled a couple of dishes, but that's all in my memory.

I just googled 'model train shelves' and, of course, got waaaay more 'hits' (52 x 10^6) than I can process...  (lessee, at pi x 10^7 seconds/year, that just over a year at one hit per second, not counting bathroom breaks....)  A couple of things I did see on the first page was a) lots of pictures of various incarnations of train shelves (if you click on one of the pictures you'll get many screen-fulls - err - screens-full?) and b) there do seem to be some Al shelves sized for O-gauge that didn't have the 'middle rail'.  I have no idea whether they are any good, etc.  What I was looking for was an example of what I think of as a stair-step shelf, where there is room for two rows of trains, with the back row on a step up so it can still be seen.  It wouldn't have to be a full step (meaning the full height of the train in front) - it could be half that or ...  I didn't really see a good example of what is floating around in my head - but as an earlier poster noted, since you aren't running these trains, you don't have to have much clearance at all between the two rows of trains.  The advantage of this - especially using half-height back steps - is that one can get ~4 rows of trains in the same vertical space as ~ 3 single-depth rows (YMMV).

Since I do live in earthquake country (assuming we don't burn up first), having some way to prevent trains from peeling off the shelf when the 'moderate one' hits seems like a good idea.  The pegs are an interesting thought.  At this point, I'm still inclined to have some sort of glass or clear plastic front - perhaps sliding in dados in the front top and bottom of each shelf.

Goody posted:

For those of you in earthquake country, take a look at how Ward Kimball, former Disney animator and one of TCA's early charter members, dealt with shelving.  His shelves were wood with track grooves and every foot or so along a shelf, he inserted a peg about and inch or two in height.  If the world began to "shake and bake" the pegs prevented his trains from falling off the shelves.  Ward had a world class collection .  I'm sure one would not have difficulty pulling up pictures of his train rooms either on the internet or in past editions of the TCA Quarterly.  For those of us in less volatile areas, Glenn Snyder's shelves are the best.  

After the 1994 EQ, I learned this trick from Ward Kimball also.  I was fortunate to visit his collection (and him) in San Gabriel a couple of times in the '90s.  I do believe (though I could be wrong) that he used 8" centers on the 1/4" dowels which were cut  3"- 4" long and sunk 1/2" into the shelf.

My current shelves are oak with two levels of trains on each shelf (as someone above suggested).  Shelves are about 6" deep.  It works extremely well.  Rather than dowels as Ward used, I now use copper wire (looks good!) that runs all the way along the front of the shelf - and is about 3" above the shelf itself.  The wire comes in spools and is about 1/16".  Holes drilled between cases allow the wire to be continuous across the front on my Postwar collection - about 18' of shelving, 9' tall.