I’ve been out of model railroading for a few years now since I left school and moved away from my hometown where I was into the hobby with my father. I want to do it here where I live now, however, my fiance has two cats who have access to the entire house and I can’t safely always guarantee doors will be shut.
I have two options:
A) Build a small n scale layout in the office
B) Build a HO scale layout in the bedroom since it’s so massive we have the extra room.
I’d like to go with B because of the fact I have the trains, track, etc and it’d be much more cost effective to do this but I can’t find a way to solve one problem. Getting the cats to not jump on the layout. My only thought was building some type of plexiglass border so they can’t that would hing together on each side keeping it supported in the air and then use almost door hinges on the bottom section so it can fold down when i need to work on the layout. This, however, sounds very complicated and I was hoping someone might have had to try and do something like this to prevent animals in the past and has a better idea!
How high can the cats jump? I know they can get up on a 36" kitchen counter top. But a 42" or 48" layout? Mine varies between 48" and 54" - Never had a cat problem when I ‘cat sit’ my friends cat. Of course I have no stools or desks nearby to give it an ‘assist’!. The ultimate defense is a locked door…
I know the larger cat can reach the kitchen counter which is the highest i would want to put the layout considering i want to not have to use a ladder to see the valleys, etc. i’d do the locked door but with a 5 year old and it being the master bedroom i know the traffic in and out would be quite a lot and eventually someone would forgot to leave it closed on accident and rather than have it happen and me explode when i get home and realize the cat decided to scratch away a mountain i’d find a fix before it happened
Figures we can’t have the fat cats who don’t do anything but sleep.
My benchwork is 48" and so far I have not seen either of our cats jump directly onto it from the ground. The washer sits next to my benchwork and they had been using it to get on top of the benchwork. Since my layout is still in planning stage I put a large piece of styrofoam between the washer and layout, I have not caught them up there since. I’m also considering some type of curtain wall incase they do get up there. Maybe hanging it similar to shower curtains.
