The recent thread on 'Glenn Snyder display' prompted me to plan out in detail my thinking about a display case for some of my S-gauge train collection. So firing up Sketchup (THE greatest thing since sliced bread for woodworkers) and putting fingers to keyboard, here's my current thinking, FWIW.
The semi-transparent elements in the drawing are, notionally, clear plastic fronts - two per shelf - that slide in 1/8 x 1/8" tracks routed in the front top and bottom of each shelf. The right side of the cabinet is near a corner, so these front sliders can only be removed from the left side. These two closeups show the two cabinet sides:
My plan is to use 1/8" acrylic for the fronts, so having the front pieces sized for each shelf will eliminate any potential problem of sagging that could be an issue for a larger piece. As I noted in my post on the Glenn Snyder display thread, I think having some sort of front on the cabinet is important for living in earthquake country (and it has the additional benefit of preventing dust accumulation). I can still access each shelf relatively easily - though as I sit here typing this, I realize I may not have enough room to pull out ~3 ft. sections of the acrylic (two per shelf), so it may have to be 3 two foot sections (this cabinet will be mounted on the wall in my home office as I don't have a train room (negotiations are on-going...)).
My current thinking is to use 1/2" baltic birch plywood for the shelves and 3/4" plywood for the cabinet sides. The 1/4" back will be screwed or stapled into each shelf, providing some stiffening to prevent sag. The 3/4 x 3/4" vertical piece in the center front should help stiffen the front of the shelves. I haven't run this through the Sagulator calculator yet. I could always add some 1 by runners under the bottom and top shelves.
I've sketched this out at 6 ft. total - about 71 inches of display track (or grooves in the shelves), but I need to check the total length of my Santa Fe A-B-A plus combine, coach, dome and observation cars that I'd like to put on one shelf -- so it could be slightly longer. I've also thought about finding a way to put power on a portion of the track on each shelf to light up LED lights in the passenger cars and/or cabeese -- a cool way to provide shelf lighting...
ps -- no I didn't do either the SD-40(?) or the tracks -- one of the really great features of sketchup is the on-line library of all sorts of shapes and things (furniture to motorcycles to lotsa stuff) that can be imported into your own drawing - most of which are fully 3-D and editable. So kudos and thanks to whoever spent the time doing these.
