Peter's Model Railroading | The Layout | Layout Benchwork
Hazel Mine Modules Benchwork
Now that I have lived with the one module for a couple of years and am 100% happy with the module's materials and the plan for this Hazel Mine scene, it is time to plan for the layout's next phase. This next phase involves building two more modules, one on either side of the one existing one. However, that means I need some sort of way to hold the modules up and together, i.e. "benchwork". After thinking about it, and deciding to rearrange things in the room where the layout is housed, I came up with this ladder construction design. It consists of two 8-foot I-beams with four perpendicular I-beams to separate them. Each I-beam will be screwed together as one stand-alone entity, and the various I-beam sections will be attached to each other with screws, also. This will make it possible to dismantle this ladder framework into individual components for when a move has to be made. When the framework is built, I will check to see if triangular gussets are necessary to give it the necessary lateral strength, but for now I'll assume it is strong enough as designed. I chose to make the long I-beams 8 feet long, because my plan is to, eventually, have four modules to make up the Hazel Mine scene. Each I-beam will be made out of two 1x4 (top and bottom) and one 1x6 (center "spine"; to prevent sag) stock boards. The modules aren't too heavy, so there is no real need to "over design".
With the "benchwork" of the layout designed, the next step is to figure out how to place the ladder framework high enough in the air for me to work on the layout. Another consideration is our cats; they like to come into the room and "explore". During previous layouts, I used a collection of cabinets that I had built many years ago, upon which I built my layouts. When I started this new layout, I decided that those cabinets were just too bulky and space-consuming, so I moved them into the garage. Later, I came up with the idea of cutting them in half, along their depth. These were 18-inch deep cabinets, so when I cut them in half, I wound up with two 8-inch deep cabinets (accounting for some cutting-blade loss and clean-up). All I had to do was put another back panel on the front half that was cut off. Even though I had done that, the modified cabinets remained in the garage. Until I came up with this new idea for the benchwork, and realized that I could arrange them in such a manner so as to provide ample support for the I-beam ladder frame, and provide for a ton of shelf space for model railroading tools. This CAD drawing shows the arrangement of 6 such 8-inch deep cabinets. Some of the cabinets have fixed shelves (at differing spacings) and some have adjustable shelves. The cabinets span just about the entire width of the room (there are a few inches to spare for storing some tall items next to the layout).
This is what the set-up will look like. The rear I-beam is flush with the backs of the cabinets, and the front I-beam is flush with the front of the two perpendicular cabinets.
This CAD drawing shows three different modules on top of the benchwork. The center one in the diagram represents the one that I have already completed. The other two are the next phase of the layout. The final, fourth, one will be some time in the future.
The final component of this entire set-up is a dedicated workbench for my modeling efforts, shown here in orange. I have been lacking that. I have been using my main office desk, but it turned out to be a real pain constantly having to move the tools in and put away when working on a project. So, a big part of my vision behind this design was to have a space where I can leave an active project sitting on the workbench and not waste a bunch of time gathering, and then later on, putting away, all of the tools. The cabinets will house all of my tools, with the most-often used ones near the workbench surface, and the less-often used ones in the outer cabinets or in the cabinets under the workbench. The workbench surface will be cut to form around the interior of the center two cabinets, so that those cabinets can offer support for the back of the workbench. Also, the workbench surface will then not need to be made skinnier, depth-wise, because it won't jut out into the room. The workbench area is about 46" x 27" (117cm x 68cm).
The (blue) cabinets are set away from the wall by ~12 inches. The modules are 4 feet deep, so the final set-up will have them overhanging by 12 inches in the back and 12 inches in the front. Since the cabinets take up almost the entire width of the room, the space behind the cabinets is used to store household items that don't need to be accessed. The two outer cabinets, on the far left and far right, will only be attached to the other cabinets by two screws at the top, mostly to hold them in position, but that makes it possible to get to the stuff in the back, should the need ever arise. At the very back, near the wall, there will be a little bit of space for some sort of framework to hold up a backdrop. I do want to have a backdrop of some sorts, to make photography a bit more pleasant.
And, after three weeks of "hobby time", I was able to re-arrange everything, get the cabinets attached to one another, and trim the workbench surface such that it slid into the center cabinets. I have not yet bought the materials needed to build the I-beams, so the one module just sits up there temporarily.
The workbench surface is actually a leftover piece of the back of a cabinet, so it was "used" for various purposes over the two decades that I have had it. But, with the price of plywood these days, this is too valuable to not use. The two large holes used to route electrical cords out the back of the cabinet, but now I plan on gluing a small piece of plywood underneath each of them, so that those holes can be used to hold a paint or glue bottle or into which I can put some small parts that otherwise would roll off the surface when I am working on a project. I plan to fill in all of the former screw holes with wood putty, and likely paint the entire surface white to maximize visibility of tiny items on the workbench. Those are all projects that can be done over time. The same goes for moving all of the tools and things out of storage boxes and into these cabinets. But, at least I can start doing some small modeling projects again.
If you look closely at the right and top edges of the workbench surface in the photo above, you'll notice that there is a bit of a gap between it and the adjacent cabinets. These are fantastic places for tiny parts, paint brushes, and small springs to disappear into. To avoid that future frustration, I found some leftover oak strips and cut them to size and glued them to the top of the workbench. They are not glued to the cabinets, so that the whole thing can still be disassembled in the future. But, at least now I can work with some peace of mind. You can also see that the small hole in the workbench surface now has a "bottom" to it. A small paint bottle fits in there perfectly.
I want to keep often-used tools nearby. Tweezers are something I use on nearly every project. Years ago I had come up with this holder for tweezers and my two "ear polypus" or "alligator clamps". The latter I don't use very often, but they are flat like the tweezers, so they fit. All that this hanger is, is a section of leftover 1/4" plywood, to which I glued 1/8" pieces of stripwood to make the various slots. I simply glued this to the back of one of the cabinets on the right-hand side of my workbench.
Having a single 3/4" sheet of plywood that is almost 4 feet wide by itself is not strong enough to keep it from sagging when something heavy is put on it. So, I cut a 3-1/2" wide piece of leftover plywood to length, and attached it to the underside of the workbench surface, and to the cabinets on the sides with a single screw. This made it rock-solid. Again, wood putty and some paint will, eventually, "pretty" this up.
Continuing my effort at efficiently storing often-used tools, I drilled 1/8" holes into the back of the left-side cabinet and glued in a 3/4" length of 1/8" dowel. By putting the hole at a slight upward angle, the plyers, in this case, naturally slide to the cabinet and stay in position. It is now easy to grab the one I need and put it away immediately when done. As you can see, I also put a temporary light over the workbench (the I-beams will have these light fixtures more permanently installed on them later on). The one dark-walnut shelf in the back holds my decals. I need a safe, flat surface to store those, so that's where they will all go.
The next thing I tackled was the collection of drill bits, screw driver bits, and small files. These are items I use quite often and are a pain to store efficiently. Years ago I had built a drill bit stand (see here), which holds all of my wood-boring drill bits, from the tiniest to the largest. I simply cut down the block of wood that I used at that time (which was a leftover from another project), to just be big enough for the drill bits collection, and then I screwed that to the shelf in this center cabinet. To the left of that block, I drilled 5 rows of 20 holes to hold my collection of screw driver bits. So, if I need several drill bits and their drivers while doing a project around the house, I can just pull out the drawer and bring all of them with me. Here at the workbench, I can just grab the one I need. The remaining empty space was perfect for storing my collection of small files. I moved the shelf with the decals to this location, to make more efficient use of space.
It's starting to look much more inviting to get to work on a project. I have about 100 of those small plastic bins with the red lids. These are containers I found at the local grocery store and they are great for storing small parts, such as details, figures, small tools, scenery items, ballast, etc. These will continue to be used, and I moved most of them into the left-most cabinet (in the dark part of the photo). They are all numbered and I have a spreadsheet that indicates what is in each of those containers, for quick look-ups. I have a good number of Bankers boxes full of model railroading items and tools, and I am slowly working through each of them to move things from them into the workbench space. The same thing goes for those numbered shipping boxes visible in this photo.
And, finally, construction of the benchwork is commencing. One might argue that buying a single sheet of 4' x 8' furniture-grade 3/4" plywood would be cheaper than buying pre-primed pine boards, but the convenience of having the boards already the size that I need, and not having to man-handle a sheet of plywood for this one project is worth it to me. My design, above, called for the I-beams to be composed of one 1x6 and two 1x4 boards. However, when I actually went to Lowe's and looked at what they had in their inventory, I was very impressed with the quality of these 1x4 boards. I had already been kind of questioning my decision, once I saw my design drawn in CAD, that the 1x6 core of the I-beam might be too tall, too overwhelming. In person, I realized that it would indeed be (1x6 is actual 1x5.5 in reality, but still). The 1x4 (in reality they are 1x3.5) turned out to be plenty strong by themselves, and that is without the two other boards. The boards are primed with white, but I will, eventually, paint them my standard layout fascia dark-green (as can be seen on the sides of my module, above), so that will minimize their visual emphasis as well. I bought 9 8-foot boards; 6 for the main I-beams and 3 for making the four perpendicular cross members.
To actually construct the I-beams, I needed a method by which I could guarantee that the vertical member of the I-beam was truly centered on the horizontal members. Also, I needed a way to make sure that when I drilled the holes and install the screws, that those would hit the center of the vertical board. The problem, of course, is that constructing these you are blindly drilling into the vertical member. One day it dawned on me that I could build some sort of temporary "sled" that would force the vertical member to be centered across the horizontal beam, and could also mark the dead-center of that vertical member on the horizontal member. So, when I was ready to build these long 8-foot I-beams, I dug through my scrap plywood in the garage and started off by building that sled. This first photo shows a 1/4" sheet of plywood clamped to the bottom of the horizontal member. I then carefully glued two 3/4" pieces of plywood to the 1/4" plywood sheet, with a small piece of paper in between them and the horizontal member, just enough for the sled to slide, but not enough to become inaccurate later on.
Two additional pieces of 3/4" plywood would then be glued to the bottom of the sled (the sled is being built in place upside-down).
This is the final shape of the sled, positioned upside-down. The last two boards at the top were also glued with a piece of paper in between them and the vertical member of the I-beam to get them tight, but not too tight.
This photo shows all the tools and materials I used to actually construct the I-beams. The sled is now in its correct orientation, with the horizonal member of the I-beam being screwed down to the vertical member. There were several things to deal with early on. First, I have no surface anywhere in the house where I have a dead-flat 8-foot bit of space. Floors are not flat, and my garage workbench is only 5 feet wide. However, I have this unused 4-foot wide "coffee table" (a cheap one bought years ago on Amazon) that is made out of man-made materials. It is actually very flat. It comes with four square legs that are also the exact same thickness as the table-top. So, I laid those out on my floor, to fully support the 8-foot boards, but I only did the assembly work on the 4-foot wide table surface. The second issue was to get the first screw installed. That is tricky, because there can be no clamps used to hold the two I-beam members clamped together, as the act of clamping may cause some sort of distortion. Yet, the boards are loose and just simply balancing on each other, so it is easy for them to fall. Also, I want the ends of the boards to line up nicely. So, the first screw is installed in this photo, before I took the time to set up this photo shot. Note that there is a pencil line drawn across the length of the sled. This indicates the dead-center of the vertical board. To determine that, I put this sled on just the vertical member, and marked off the center of the vertical member (the boards are not exactly 3/4" wide). I then transposed that mark to the top of the sled, one on each end, and drew a line between them with a ruler, so that it is easy to see.
This photo shows the whole set-up for installing screws.
By the time I took this photo, I had already completed the installation of the horizontal member at the bottom, so I flipped it over and placed the top one on the assembly. The sled worked perfectly. My process was as follows. Mark the locations for the screws using an awl. I put one at 1 inch from the end, and from then on I put one every 6 inches. The intersection between the marking on the tape-measure and the pencil line on the top of the sled allowed me to precisely place a hole at the drill location. I did this up to 48", and later, when the first half of the screws were installed, I rotated the whole assembly over, so that I was always working on the flat table top, and did the same process on the remaining 48" of the I-beam. When the hole markings were made, I slid the sled to right next to the hole and pre-drilled the hole. I then followed that with a drill bit that allowed the screw's head to sink to just below the surface of the wood. And, finally, I would drive the screw into the hole.
Each beam took me one evening of hobby time to build. The end result was perfect and they are nice and straight. Exactly what I wanted.
Next came the hardest part. I needed to clean everything off of the tops of the cabinets that make up the workbench and layout-support area. I also had to move the one module off of the temporary space. These I-beams can be lifted (they are heavy), but due to the cramped space in the room, I could only lift them from one end. This required all of the strength I had, but I was able to accomplish it. The photo shows the two I-beams in their final position, on top of the cabinets.
The benchwork, however, is not finished yet, as I needed to build the cross members that go between the two long I-beams. The remaining three 8-foot pine boards were first cut in half at the tablesaw. I then set up the saw to cut four sections of 23-1/8" long from each of the three boards. This wound up being the actual distance between the two vertical members of the 8-foot long I-beams shown in their position, above. With all 12 boards cut to their length, I then used the sled to assemble four short I-beams. I was able to build these in the garage on the tablesaw. This took about an hour. I put one screw in the middle and one each 6 inches from the ends. The very ends had no screws, as those would have likely interfered with the screws I need to install later on when these I-beams are attached to the long I-beams. When that was all done, I carefully measured and measured again, to see what the actual distance was from the vertical member of the I-beam to the edge of the horizontal members. This would be the "lip" that I needed to make in these four shorter I-beams. I then set up the tablesaw so that it would cut the ends off of each of the short I-beams, just high enough to not cut into the vertical member. The final result is shown in the photo above.
The next step was to install these cross I-beams to the long ones. I carefully moved the module out of the way, and then worked on slipping in, aligning, and installing each of the I-beams. I positioned them such that they matched up with the cabinets on which this framework rests. The idea being that that creates additional "captured" storage space above the cabinets. The shorter I-beams did not slide smoothly into the long ones, so the "fine adjustment tool" (a.k.a. hammer) was needed here and there. The important thing was to line the two long beams up with each other and to put the short I-beams perfectly perpendicular. I did all of that with the long I-beams on top of the cabinets. This actually was quite time-consuming work, taking me most of a Saturday afternoon into the evening. After a fews days of rest (mostly due to lack of time), I, once again, removed the module from the framework, and raised the whole thing into the position you see here. I am glad I decided to use screws to assemble this framework, as it is quite heavy. With the unit in this position, I could get on a step-stool and install the screws through the other long I-beam. This went much faster as the shorter I-beams were already in their correct positions. I had clamped the front/bottom long I-beam to the cabinets to be safe, as you can see in the lower-right corner of the photo.
Once completed, I put the framework back into its position. This was really the only way I could get almost the entire framework into view. This is likely the last time this view is available, until a future move.
This is an overall shot of the layout's support framework and the one and only module on it. It is in the correct position relative to the future modules that will be built. And this represents the current status of the "layout".
However, this is the normal day-to-day look, as the remaining Gatorfoam boards, left over from the first order, are used to disuade the cats from trying to find their way on top of the layout. The top of the support framework sits at 51-1/2" (1.3m) from the floor. The track level sits at 56-1/4" (~1.4m). That is at about 14" (35.5cm) below my eye-level, so just about perfect for me enjoying my work. My eye is about two inches above the top of the tipple's roof line.
Electricity and LED lighting arrives at the workbench.
To do this, I first had to route an extension cord from the room's plug to an extension cord with multiple sockets. Not only is this necessary for the lights, but this also serves as the 110-volt source for power tools used at the workbench. I installed it under the workbench on the right-hand side. Since I am right-handed, I will tend to hold power tools in my right hand, and so the cord should dangle to the right. In addition to not taking up space on the workbench itself, putting the plug under the workbench keeps the power tools' cords from accidentally knocking over bottles or damaging delicate models. I put it as high as I could to keep the cats from chewing on the cords. There is a cord sleeve on one of them. The other thing to note is that I decided to put a dedicated LED light under the workbench, so that it is easier to see what is stored in the cabinet shelves under the, otherwise, dark area, and also to more quickly find a fallen part or tool. Each LED light you see in these photos has their own on/off switch, so that makes it easy to control which one is on. The white "bar" above the plug is a cord-routing cover for the lights above the workbench surface.
From the workbench surface looking up, you can see the plastic cord-routing covers that I bought and installed to route the power cord to the back LED light.
It then runs another cable (partially visible on the left) to the front LED light. This makes for a well-lit, pleasant work environment. The lights are screwed to the underside of the benchwork, so that easy to remove and potentially replace.