Has anyone ever had a layout drop down from the ceiling? I still havent gotten around to building anything, as it’s been my boat season, (haven’t taken any on the water, but have been trying to get them there)
Anyways, I really domt have room for a nice sized layout, and was thinking I could have a 4x8 drop down from the ceiling in my garage. Some kind of cable lift system (motorized if I have to) to lift it up so I can park in there or work on my boats, and them lower it for running trains.
I suppose I should go bigger, but im not sure if a 4x8 would turn out to work well. I’d probably just go with a 5x9 if I went bigger. I’m not looking for much on a layout and not going super detailed or anything. Pretty much the bare wood painted green, cork roadbed and the tracks. Maybe a few trees and buildings. Definitely a loop and a few switching off points to have some operations. Just something to run trains around. Not going super complex or heavy on what it is, it’ll be very generic and plain, just to keep cost down.
Anyways, I was wondering if anyone had done the drop down part before. I’m not going to go into the ceiling, but have it raised up when I need it, or need to work onnthe underside of it.
Great Idea. I have thought of this before and did the planning at the drawing board. It wouldn’t be very hard to do at all.
Four cables to each corner of the layout in adjustable tension clamps. Four vertical pulleys on the ceiling rafters directly above each corner of the layout. Four horizontal pulleys inline maybe two feet or so from the vertical pulleys. And then band the four pulleys into one with another tension clamp. Then one more pulley in the crevice of the ceiling and the wall so the cable drops down to either a reversible ratchet similar to one that winds up a boat on a trailer or fed to a forward and reverse electric motor. The boat ratchet would be super easy though when you think about how much heavier a boat is than a layout.
Then I would put two clamps on the wall at the two corners of the layout equivalent to the kind on a tool box only a little bigger to hold the layout stable. Unless you’re going to put it in the middle of the garage so you can have reach on both sides of the layout. I guess it wouldn’t hurt anything if it’s swings a little. You will have the only flying trapeze layout. You could come up with some kind of horses with four wedge stabilizers so it doesn’t swing.
My father in law did this with a 4x8 reinforced at the edges. He used a couple of those bicycle lift kits tied together so they all went up and down at the same speed, roughly at the quarter points of the short ends. I believe he had folding legs with screw height adjusters that it could sit on when down.
If I were going to try this I’d use counterweighting, either like a dumbwaiter or using garage door springs, so that only a little power would pull the layout down, and if its locking ‘slipped’ it would be neutral or even rise slightly rather than tip or fall. I would be tempted to anchor the four cables inboard at the intersection of lateral and longitudinal quarter points rather than all the way at the corners … or, calculating the weight distribution of the “finished” layout, at the spacing that best equalized the bending stresses in the plywood outward from the cables. I think this would also facilitate operating the layout as the whole of the perimeter would be open.
I’ve done both a dropdown and fold-up 4’ x 8’. The dropdown was in a two car garage and used a wall mounted hand crank winch (⅛” wire rope) that worked very well.
The fold-up 4’ x 8’ also worked out very nice. I mounted it in my boys bedroom and took up ten inches when folded up against the wall.
Of the two I prefer the fold-up. When I built it the boys were very young, 3 & 5 (1967). The 5 yr old could unfold it for use, don’t think they could have managed dad’s dropdown in 1975.
I actually made the fold-out dual purpose having a second 4’ x 8’ section for an HO scale car track, popular in the late 60s. The car track was floating and could be left in the wall enclosure. It had a pair of latches that when snapped to the HO train board would come out on top of the train board, they could pick and choose trains or cars.
The dropdown and fold-up served us well until our move in 1984.
I have a 5 foot by 8 foot wargaming table that drops down onto sawhorses in my garage.
I have no fancy cable system. It is built out of 2 inch foam and on an alluminum frame. Two of us can take it down and stow it with no problem.
This idea is workable. I would go 5 by 10 instead of 4 by 8 for an island layout and just stretch a good 4 by 8 track plan to fill the space. That gives you 18 extra square feet of fun and still easily fits in a garage.
There was a small piece in MR from the early 60’s showing a diagram for this. Key points were that the four wire cables ran through fairly large pulleys (6-8" (?) diameter) to a common counter weight. This ensured the layout table remained level during raising and lowering. The layout was slightly heavier than the counter weight. Several hook & eye latches between table and ceiling prevented accidental lowering.
I did this years ago with a 6’ by 6’ layout in my son’s bedroom. I used a 120 volt winch mounted low on one wall to raise and lower the layout. The winch cable was connected to the bottom center of a long piece of aluminum bar stock used as a spreader bar. A pair of cables was connected to the top of each end of the spreader bar. A double pulley was used at the ceiling above each end of the spreader bar to make the 90 degree angle out across the ceiling. Single pulleys were mounted to the ceiling above each corner of the layout. Friction mount cones were used to attach the cables to the layout. I first ran the two cables on each end of the spreader bar to the two corners on the same side of the layout. However, the layout had a tendency to shift to one side or the other and would not stay level. This problem dissappeared once I ran the cables to opposite corners (the two long cables forming an “X” under the ceiling). I designed the benchwork to include pockets into which 2" X 2" legs could be inserted. Folding sawhorses could be used as well. Don’t rely on the cables to hold the layout when lowered as the layout will continue to swing around. The powered winch made it very easy to raise and lower the layout smoothly. I would not raise or lower a layout by hand as a sudden jerk or slip could bounce things off the layout. The biggest advantage to a suspended layout over a “folding” or “portable” layout is the fact that you can leave everything on the layout during storage. I live in Southern California and our suspended layout experienced several moderate earthquakes, yet nothing ever fell off while the layout was raised in the storage position.
Unfortunately, even this small layout proved too large for the bedroom it was in as there was extremely limited or no space between the layout perimeter and the bedroom furniture. The layout had a central operato
If you put together a table with 1" x 4"s using lap joints glued and screwed and it won’t twist and with a 2" extruded foam top it will be light weight.
One block and tackle pully will set you back about $25.00 and you can run rope, chain or cable to the corners from that.
I had a friend that had a 6’ x 20’ table like this in his garage and had ten cables runnin to a central block and tackle. He used carabiners to hook and unhook and it worked like a charm.
I would definitely have some sawhorses that fold away to sit the table on. I was going to add walls around the outside of the 4x8 (or whatever side I end up fitting) I’d be using the cable to lift it up out of the way so I can park my car below. I am doing this myself, so I am looking into something powered. It’s good to hear this has been done before and isn’t a crazy idea .I will look at those bike lifts. My original though was to have the cables permanently mounted to it, but I think if I went with something like that I could tie them all together, but be able to unhook it and send it back up. I would do a fold down, but I have no open wall. and I am setting it all up by myself, so I have to think smarter, not harder when it comes to putting it up in the air.
My 4x6 is on exactly such a system in my garage. I am using a lifting storage system installed by an outfit local to me in the Sacramento, CA area. Their literature even shows a layout using their system. It has a hand crank for manual operation, as well as a rod I can chuck into my drill for motorized operation.
While my layout is 4x6, the actual lifting platform is 4x4. By hanging weights on the ends of the cables to keep them taught, I can set the layout down on a table, disengage the cables, and move the layout for better access to certain areas (one end is very close to some storage cabinets), or to the outside for toxic building events (such as painting the track).
There have been several articles in MR over the years with layouts the raise and lower. John Armstrong even did a plan for one, significantly larger than a 4x8, with details of how the framing might be done.
The key is having the individual cables going to a strip of steel to act as an equalizer which is then connected to the lifting device, either a powered or a hand cranked winch.
That severely limits the size of the layout. There’s such a layout in John Armstrong’s Creative Layout Design book. Say you have an 8 foot ceiling. You want the layout height at 36" - that means the layout has to be less than 5 feet in that dimension or it can;t fold up against the wall. I suppose you could make it long, if the length of the wall is say 14 feet, you can probably make the layout 10 feet long, and get a nearly 5x10 out of it. Something that long is going to be really difficult to fold up, not to mention if you want it at a more workable height for an average adult, more like 48" off the ground, you lose even more width.
And there is no access along one full side, so even if it is only 4’ wide, you won;t be able to reach the track that goes along the back where it folds up. A drop down from the ceiling type of thing allows access to all 4 sides.
Instead of coming up with reasons why it won’t work, why not think positively about how it might work? It certainly would be a lot easier to construct and mechanically operate.
A friend in Tampa has a Wargaming/Boardgaming Table, 4 foot by 8 foot, that drops onto a pool table in his recreation room. The wargaming table has the lighting for the pool table (LEDs) built into the bottom of it.
There is a 12 inch high trim board around the game table that is decorated with beer logos. When it is in the up position it looks like a fancy canopy for the pool table and you cannot tell its real purpose.
The ceilings in the room are very high, at least twelve feet, so it all works very well. He has a winch system from an off-road vehicle built into the ceiling. The cables are on the corners and do not disconnect. They do not really get in the way.
Apart from attaching pulleys into the ceiling trusses to lift up a layout, I don’t see the Murphy bed style THAT much easier to build. It still needs a fairly stiff frame, since it will be supported by the hinge on one edge and legs or a sawhorse or whatever at the far end. Build the lifting mechanism smooth enough, and you wouldn;t even have to take the structures and rolling stock off the layout. A fold up one - you’d at least have to remove the locos and rolling stock, anything not fastened down, and also any tall structures.
Creative Layout Design is a great book to have, it has a lot of interesting and atypical concepts for locationg model railroads. The section on the Murphy bed type (which John in his way called the Murphy Bed & Credenza Railroad - he proposed a small credenza alongside the layout as a place to park the trains when the layout folded up) pretty much covers all the pros and cons of that sort of design. It’s hard to find, I got a copy at a train show, unfortunately the previous owner tore out all the pages related to one concept - the one on building a layout in a single wide mobile home. I guess I know what sort of layout they built.
There was some guy many years ago who filled a three car garage with a layout which lowered from the ceiling. It could be stopped anywhere in the travel range for the most convient work height for any task at hand.
I think a photo of it was in an early release of Track Planning for Realistic Operation, but it might have been in Armstrong’s other track planning book (or somewhere else entirely).
