I’m desiging a small layout with a spaghetti-bowl track plan to set up during the holidays. It’s about five by five feet and designed to sit on top of a coffee table.
When not in use, I want to hang it vertically on large hooks on the wall in the garage. My concern is getting the benchwork strong enough yet light enough for one or two persons to move around.
My initial design uses 1x2 pine L-Girder construction. Here is a vew from underneath the coffee table:
Here is the benchwork:\The preliminary design uses 1/8" plywood in a cookie-cutter configuration for the roadbed substrate:
Here are the basic dimensions:
II’m seeking recommendations for the best combination of strength and lightness. Would you recommend box frame, l-girder or something else? Should I use cookie-cutter plywood or spline roadbed? Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
If it was me, I’d just frame it in 1x4 and be done with it. That’s going to save a lot of fitting, as well as being stronger.
Unless you plan on gluing the track down, 1/4" plywood may work out better for the cookie-cutter sub-roadbed. It’s will be difficult to either spike or use track nails with 1/8" masonite or other such stuff. The plywood will readily take whatever you spike into it, and resist sagging better.
1/8" masonite will work fine for the sides if you do frame it as drawn. If you use 1x4 lumber it’s easy enough to just paint or stain that.
OK, if that deep, you’d need a 1x10, which would start to make it heavier than you probably want.
Another approach would to to cut the inside supports from plywood, which should make it as light 1x2, but even stronger.
I’m a big fan of making stuff out of 1x2 and 1x3 lumber. What worries me are the large number of joints. Once glued and screwed, the stick lumber can be mighty strong, but plywood would likely be stronger.
You can do a boxed frame with a foam topping and I have seen one made out of only foam. I have one 4’x4’ module I can lift with one hand and it started as a 1x4 frame with 2" foam. You can sometimes get big blocks of polystyene foam, maybe to the dimentions you need.
My friend made the framework for our portable layout using a grid of thin birch plywood cut into strips about 4" deep. There is a thicker piece around the perimeter. All of the joints are glued and gusseted, making it incredibly rigid. It’s not super light, but it’s lighter than if it was made from 1" thick lumber. Each section is 60" long x about 38" wide. I’d go this route again in a second.
Instead of plywood on top, I used Gator Foam. In some places I glued it flat and in others I used it cookie cutter style. It’s not cheap, but it’s much lighter and very stable. It also glues nicely to the wood and adds more rigidity to the layout.
You’re getting some good suggestions here, so consider them all because some of this depends on whether you have a pretty fixed idea of the trackplan vs having the option to more easily go back and modify things. This roughly breaks down to foam vs wood for your subroadbed and supporting structure.
I actually do both nowadays. My framing is done as L-girder and the track and supporting structure are wood for the most part. Most of my scenery is now done as foam liftouts.
For something small and intended to be protable, I wouldn’t bother with liftouts. You can simply box frame and glue in the foam as rrebell suggested. I have a module like that myself and it’s pretty light, would be lighter still if I’d used 1/4" or 3/8" ply as the box. Once glued in, 2" foam make things really strong and is very light. You can then cut and build up the foam as needed. Woodland Scenics offers some foam riser sets, etc that can come in handy if you’re not comfortable with building them yourself.
I would still consider using wood for your subroadbed, etc. On the bottom to span and support with the table, you could still use some L- or T-girders. Then cookie cutter your subroadbed to plan, lay it inside your box frame and cut and build up the risers as needed. Once the subroadbed is down you can build foam liftouts to make access easy for wiring etc, as well as allowing you to take scenicking off the layout to minimize mess. However, for something portable like this, I would tend toward gluing in the foam instead for strength.
Another consideration in these chocies is how you’ll attach the track. I tend to favor wood because I can drive spikes into it. With foam, you usually glue it down. For something portable, gluing may be better and avoid movement loosening spikes.
Model railroaders tend to build the benchwork to withstand an atomic blast, in fear of warping.
For a layout of the size you are planning, a rather simple construction consisting of a 5 to 6" Styrofoam board a 1/8" masonite board to protect the sides und the underside is all you need. Lightweight, no warping at all, and dead silent when running the trains. Maybe not cheap, though.
I would buy 2 30" hollow core doors. Cut them at 5’, glue a filler piece in the open end. Use foam for hills (Woodland Scenics has some inclines). Join them together when setting up and store them separately. Use 6" sections of track across the joints that you can remove for storage.
At 2lbs per square foot for hollow core doors, the base would weigh about 50lbs. Weight is a big factor, which is why I posted this question. I cannot find online any good data to calculate the weight of the lumber because there are so many variables, inculding wood species and water content. Either way, I think both my initial design and the hollow core door would be too heavy.
Foam boxed with something light like 1/4" plywood is going to be your best bet for weight reduction. There’s one big problem with that…
All the readily available styrofoam is in 4 foot wide form factor. So a almost 60" wide square layout is going to require some thinking. If you’re OK with deeper foam, you could cut the same design in half, which would make it narrow enough to cut from a 4x8 sheet. Cut two different sets of that from 2" foam, rotate one set so it’s 90 degrees from the other and bond them together. That should be strong and stiff enough. There are some other ways to cut and bond it to get your 60" wide layout, so consider the possibilities.
I think I’m getting in over my head, here. I don’t even know which version of foam to use, and a visit to any of the manufacturers’ sites boggles the mind with uninformed choices. Looks like I need to do a lot more research.
Foam’s nothing to be scared about. Without having looked at a Model Railroader in 16 years or looked online at anything, I stumbled onto foam at Home Depot, when they wouldn’t cut down a sheet of homasote for me. Then I started looking online and found videos by Ken Patterson and he is using the same stuff I am.
If you’re worried about fire, I recall seeing a Youtube video in which they subjected white, blue, and pink foam to a flame. The white foam caught fire. The pink and blue foam just melted without spreading the flame. I tried to find the video but couldn’t find it.
\The preliminary design uses 1/8" plywood in a cookie-cutter configuration for the roadbed substrate:
Here are the basic dimensions:
II’m seeking recommendations for the best combination of strength and lightness. Would you recommend box frame, l-girder or something else? Should I use cookie-cutter plywood or spline roadbed? Any suggestions would be much appreciated.