By now, you’ve probbaly seen my plan and room shape, if not, it’s on my web site. With solid continuous benchwork, there would be two potential duckunders - at the door and to get to the alcove area where my workbench is. I HAD planned to make two removeable/dropdown/something sections so there would be no ducking. But the reality of the matter is that the narrow tall benchwork sections are NOT all that stable by themselves - it’s not the benchwork that flexes, but the whole thing tends to tip back and forth. Part of it is the carpeted floor, part is the tall narrow nature of the sections - they did the same ona hardwood floor. Tied together it’s solid as a rock. So, were I to put removable sections in place for the last two connections, I am getting the feeling there would be issues with the alignment. Or if someone should lean against the layout, it could pull teh joints far enough apart to make an excessive gap
One option is to attach the end benchwork sections to the wall - I’d prefer to avoid this if possible for a couple of reasons, mostly because this is an apartment and I’d rather not put holes in the wall.
Option 2 is just live witht he duckunder. The doorway one is not bad - it would be at most 6" wide since it only has to contain two parallel straight tracks. I temporarily attached a piece of foa at the correct height of the bottom of the duckunder and it wasn’t a problem getting through, even though I have bad knees. There’s ewnough space behind the door to come in and stand prior to ducking under - somewhat critical as I always keep the door closed to keep the cats out. The other duckunder would be more trouble. It wil be wider, because there is a cirve on it, and it is much narrower. It wasn’t horrible (my previous layout, you had to duck under to get in the middle of the ‘donut’ and this one is a good 7" higher to the bottom of the benchwork than that one was.), but it might become annoying after a while. The good news is that once I sit down to work at th
Since you are in apartment, I would say a little depends on how long you plan to stay there. If you are fairly flexible and don’t plan to stay there forever and nothing large needs to go in and out, leave it solid. If you plan to stay there for a long time and may have flexiblilty issues, it’s time to make it work, whether you use it now or not. Have you tried some cross bracing (X) on the rear legs? Might help take some of the motion out of it. Building a shelf between the legs might also help.
Everything’s braced - if I bolted the legs to the floor, nothign would move. The legs aren;t shifting, it’s the whole thing. Too tall and narraow - it’s a bit top heavy. The 2 foot wide sections were quite stable even before being attached together. One foot is just not enough. I even widened the last section on the 1 foot part to 18" hoping it would be more stable, but no, The parts in the middle are fine - the problem is on the ‘loose’ end where it connects to the rest of the layout on only 1 side.
I plan to be here for a few years, but not forever. The idea is that I can cut through the track and scenery and unbolt everything and haul it out of here. All the legs and braces are bolted on, not screwed and glued, and it all comes apart in (mostly) 8 foot sections. One such section was not built here, it moved from my old place, and proved out that 8 feet is fine, I didn’t have to make the sections any smaller.
I agree that you should try to make the free-standing sections as stable on their own as possible. Cross braces work and remember to put struts from the legs back up to the side boards of the layout. You should fasten the side struts to as low on the legs as possible for best stability. This is an old technique borrowed from L-girder construction. I had a similar situation on my (mostly) shelf layout. I had a duck-under that stabilized the whole layout and at least to me, the duck-under was high enough so that getting in and out was not bad. But I replaced the duck-under first with a lift out section that locked tightly in place. This accomplished the same stabilization as the static duck-under and it let friends not accustomed to ducking get inside more easily. Now I’ve replaced the lift-out with a swinging gate. Again, when the gate is locked closed the whole structure is very stable.
I’m generally not for any design technique that doesn’t address human comfort. Having said that I usually make an exception for duckunders because they are a rare case where the payoffs greatly exceed the hassle of ducking under. No, I don’t think you’re being lazy. I think you’re making a logical decision.
Lance
Books on layout design, construction, and track plans
That could work for the door side - the gap is 4 feet so if a little of it is used for the diagonal brace and so forth, it won’t hurt much. I had been considering makign it a dropdown type of thing actually. The other one though, pretty much out of the question. There’s no place for it to swing to without getting rid of the cabinet I have there to store parts - there’s not much room back in that corner with my desk there, and it is also where the radiator for the room is located, and windows. So I have the desk I use as my workbench, with shelves ont he wall above it (they were already there) and I have a short wall behind me to put a cabinet with drawers. That’s about it. I actually wasn;t sure just how I was goign to do the liftout there, there isn’t a lot of space to work with and in the end I have a feelign the liftout would normally stayt in place unless for some reason I was going in and out of the work area multiple times in a short time frame. Re-engineering it as a permanent piece will actually aloow me to increase the clearence from the floor to the bottom of the section by at least 3 inches - doesn’t seem like much but that puts the bottom of anything I could bonk my head on at 45" above the floor. That’s still a full-on ‘duck’ for me as I am 6’ tall, not a ‘nod’. I have to mock that one up and try it. The doorway, with the same clearance, but only 6" of space where I need to stay ducked, really doesn’t seem to be a pain at all.
If the payoff was only for a continuous run connection I’d probably reconsider and figure out a way to make it removable no matter what. But the spot across the door is part of the mainline from one modeled scene to another - actually it’s all part of the first scene, really. To avoid TWO blocks across the door I eliminated what is the main on the real thing and left just the curved connecting track (what in a true 2 railroad plan would more or less be the ‘interchange’ track ). I could just end the railroad at the door, but going across the door adds at least 10 feet of mainline ot the run. In a small space, this is fairly significant.
I think I’ve talked myself into making the door one fixed - my idea for how to attach it does not preclude the option of later makign it either lift out or drop down.
On the other side, if it wasn’t next to the sloping part of the ceiling, I’d build a frame up and over the opening to stabilize everything and then make the section lift out, but I can’t go up far enough to make an over 6 foot clear area at that point - in any other part of the room the ceiling IS plenty high for that option.
Randy, four or six 1/4" holes in the drywall so that you can screw drawing bolts into studs on the other side of the frame members would be easy to patch, sand, prime, and sponge paint when the time comes. I wouldn’t think twice if it offered me a way to avoid the duck-under. Use 4" lag bolts and 1" quality washers to cinch each section against it adjacent wall and enjoy the bridge of whatever type you envision.
Build a threashold plate at the openings and tie the legs from each side together. Even better, let the threashold plate go back to the next set of legs or brace the legs in the linear direction down low.
This will stablize the whole thing and make lift outs more workable. I prefer simple lift outs rather than hinges and such.
That said, I can not imagine building a layout of that type without fastening it to the building at least in a few places.
Great idea, but not totally workable as the gap does not occure at the ends of each section - it’s 90 degrees to one and the section on the other side is not truly perpendicular, there’s a diagonal wall that is is parallel to. So I can connect one leg to one leg ont he other side, but I’d have to add an additional leg on one side to have something to tie to. ANd probably another one opposite that to brace to. Unlike the end of the room where I DIDN’T need to leave gaps and it’s all nice and square. Our club modular layout has a lift gate entryway build with a threshold like that, and it’s extremely stable - and also a foot lower to the ground
The diagonal one is easy to bolt to the wall - the diagonal wall is later construction to turn what was the attic into two rooms. Basic stud wall, easy to locate the studs and screw to them. The other side - it’s the mid wall between houses (this place is actually half of a double home) and it’s plaster and lathe construction. As well as theoretically the firewall - although I have a feeling that back when this house was built they didn’t extend all the way to the attic roof. Slightly key piece of info I left out before.
If the room was a foot or two wider, all benchwork would have been 2 feet wide, and this would be a non-issue. The opposite side, that needs the liftout to connect to the diagonal piece over the access to my ‘shop’ area is a 2’ section, and it does NOT have this rockign problem the narrower parts do, even though it too is 12 feet long and only attached to other benchwork at one end at this point. My previous layout was an 8x12 donut of 2’ sections - rock solid and completely freestanding - in fact it actually got moved once as a unit. 2’ and wider is plenty stable without attachment, particularly if it is fully connected - and I also built it exactly to size across the room so it’s pretty much wedged up against the walls but it’s quite stable anyway.
I would do what Crandell suggested. It is not really hard to repair dry-wall. Worst case is you would have to hire a handy man to fix the wall for you. But getting the layout stable for a lift out is a first priority.
On either side of the opening run the layout legs up over your head. Run cross pieces to connect them together top and bottom across the opening and across the benchwork. Add some short diagonals at the corners for stability. You can now do a liftout, gate, etc.
I covered that in my reply to Lance - the door opening, yes, I can do that, run it up high enough to walk under, and tie both sides together do it won’t move. But that won’t work for the other space, since it’s up against the sloped ceiling in my roomI took advantage of that to get every last inch of width out of the room, against the back with just 4" of clearance above the railhead is the first staging track, thent he second staging track. Next I will install a removeable backdrop, and then the visible track starts with a bit more clearance above it (not that there are any tall structures in the area). And attempt to come out at an angle to get ‘legs’ up above the table level would just shrink down the walkthru space which is already on the narrow side - so making an A-frame sort of thing would still be a duckunder, POSSIBLY a nod under. Hopefully tuesday night we will have a work session so I’ll have another set of eyes to look at it in person and see if I missed somehting, but I spent a lot of time getting the tracks aligned just right to fit in there and still give a passable aisle to walk through. I cna think of one other way to increase it, however it would overhang too far and absolutely require a leg to hold up the rear of the moveable part. I guess I could make it like a turnstile [:D]