Thanks to my roommate’s cat destroying my 3-car CP Rail 53’ Well Cars (I guess the cat is for CN), I know now that having a garage layout is not going to work. So the last option I have is to build shelving in my room. I figure getting some wood and brackets is not hard but can anyone recommend some good shelf layout HO track plans? I use KATO Unitrack with wide radiuses as I have mostly six-axle motive power.
Also, how do you get past the issue of having access to the room? Do you build a removable part or do you make it with hinges to get inside?
Thanks for the help.
It can be done either way–you can build a removable lift-out section, or a swing-up section, or even a swing-out section. There are various ways to do it, and most should include power cutouts so you don’t accidentally send that expensive locomotive on a one-way trip to the floor! Or you can build point-to-point, providing some sort of turning facilities for you locos at either end of the layout if it is needed.
If you energized your power lines on your layout with 25,000 volts you’re cat problems would go away immediately if not sooner.
Actually, BNSF4ever, I responded a couple of months ago to a previous posting on this subject of “Model Railroad vs Feline Fiend”; I will repost it here for your perusal and consideration.
This story was only related to me. I had a friend many years ago who had had incessant cat problems; he had acquired hobby space in the family room and had blocked his domain off with a stand-alone wall; the entranceway was a portico with a curtain. It was impossible to keep his significant other’s cat out of the layout room and off of the layout. He finally grew tired of this game and approached his wife with a possible solution; she, of course, threatened sever bodily harm if any injury befell her most precious “fifteen pound” kitty.
This friend decided to capitalize on his observation that cats always land on their feet. He watched carefully to discover where the cat was leaping from the floor to the layout; at that location he constructed a very delicately balanced collapsible shelf. The first time cat leaped for that shelf it immediately tipped forward and feline came tumbling to the floor amid a cacophony of falling cans filled with baby rattles; cat b-lined for doorway - even wife, apparently, got humored by the spectacle. Second experience; same thing. Soon cat began to grow wise and look for another access point in order to continue with it’s campaign of terror against the layout; cat got on to the layout twice but on the third try got cut off at the pass with a similiarly constructed shelf; after about seven panic rushes out of the room cat wouldn’t go near that layout room; if friend was working on layout and cat wandered into room she was shooed away with those ubiquitous cans filled with those baby rattle