I just finished my fourth one of these that I will throw into the mix. Maybe someone will find it useful. I am in an unfinished basement, so I build self-contained cabinets with a white paneling (like dry erase board) back. They are on the walls around my layout so they don't go much below waist level or you can't see them. I built the outside cabinet walls deeper than the shelves so that I could add some kind of glass or plastic doors. I have very little dust problems in my room, so I haven't been motivated to undergo that expense yet. The wider cabinet does keep your back side from brushing the trains off when working between the layout and shelves.
The shelf spacing works well. The taller cars on the front shelf will sometimes cover the trucks of the cars on the back shelf, but I think it is a good compromise between space and visibility. My tallest car is a RK Amtrak Superliner, and you can see that it fits on the back shelf. I have some S-gage in my collection, so I grooved a few shelves for O and S as you see in the dimensions.
Depending on what I am fastening them to, I screw these to the wall using Tapcon or long deck screws. I put the screws through each vertical support just above the top shelf and in the space between the bottom pairs of shelves. In these locations, the screw heads are not noticeable, especially with trains on the shelves.
The last one I built was 14' long. It was pretty heavy, but my 14-year-old son and I were able to get it hung by lifting one end at a time and blocking it up on saw horses.
Tim
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