The Joy of Shelves!

Lee:  As I wrestle with buying yet another couple of locos, I look at your stuff, and wonder when does it all end?  Most of my stuff is packed away in a closet, but knowing it is there is quite enough for me.  I have another year to pack under my belt before I can begin my serious layouts.  I am preparing, by gathering all my goods, but I can't envision the magnitude of your collection.  

I an more than a bit envious.

I made a lot of shelves years ago and now I have more trains than shelves or layout space. I plan on making drawers that pull out for under my layout to store trains in.

Drawer-shelves are great ideas, and given that I have no wall space left after this weekend's efforts, they are clearly in my future, too.  But as long as I can, I really want to display all my scale locos on wall shelves alongside one another -- it is so interesting to have, say, an UP Challenger alongside a PRR T-1 alongside an ATSF 2900, etc. Really fun to study the various details and think about what was (and what was not) in the minds of the people who designed and built each.  

You have seen this before.  My spouse is going to murdalize me if I put another shelf anywhere!

Lee, your getting old. It used to be "The Joy of Sex". Now it's "the joy of shelves"? 

Don

If you have too many shelves, could you be accused of being shelf-ish? 

I recently made some under the layout 6 foot long roll out shelves. It is so nice to have extra space and be able to easily grab whatever I feel like running.

As we were running around York buying yet more cars my wife laughed. She pointed out that all the extra space I have will eventually be a memory. It may take awhile but she is so right. 

Running out of space is a major problem. My shelves are 3 deep with a slight height adjustment for the rear two shelves. About ten years ago I acquired special brackets for standard wall shelving that allowed 3 shelves to be attached, one behind the other. I routed half inch oak so it wouldn't have a squared off front and created grooves for train tracks. I also used wood risers for the back two shelves. While the back two shelves clearly are not as good at displaying everything, they do provide excellent storage with relatively easy access. IMO, a more than fair trade off.

Where did I get them? I don't recall but I think it was from Glenn Snyder, who sells the aluminum shelves at York. A very nice man.

Gerry

I've looked at the commercially available shelves in the past but passed -- some fine products but anyway.   I've also made some with a router, and others by gluing wood "rails" to hardware (works well, and quick, and cheap).  But that method was not fast, so this weekend's shelves were just poplar boards with Atlas track placed on it. Fast and good.

The disappointing thing is, that after putting all my locos neatly and nicely up on these shelves yesterday afternoon, I measured and have barely enough space to accommodate everything I ordered from this year's catalogs (Okay, that was a lot I ordered, but still . . .).  I'm going to have to get creative about shelves, I can see, as there is just no wall space left, anywhere.