July 26, 2008

The first steps toward a new model railroad are being made. I first want to get the room set up for the new layout. My wife and I decided that this is also a good time to do some furniture re-arranging in part of the house, so we're combining it all. As my Designs page shows, I will be bringing my existing cabinets into the spare bedroom. However, I first need to build a set of ladder frames to act as the toe-kicks for the cabinets. I purposely didn't integrate them into the cabinets when I built those so that different configurations would be possible. I bought a 4' by 8' sheet of 3/4-inch plywood and cut it into 3.5" strips, which are shown in the first photo.

I generally don't do any glue work on my table saw, but these ladder frames were too long for my work table. Many years ago I bought these handy corner clamps that hold two pieces of wood at a 90-degree angle. They come in handy for this type of work. I glued the spacer board to the front/rear boards and followed that up with two drywall screws.

And here are the three ladder frames. It took me the better part of a Saturday, working in a garage that must have been over a hundred degrees!

Since the bottom of the toe-kick ladder frame will be visible when entering the room, I decided to paint them my favorite dark green. Two coats did the trick. I only painted the visible edges.

July 29, 2008

It took me another afternoon to clear out everything from this room so that I could install the ladder frames. I clamped them together and verified that they were at 90-degrees to each other and at the correct location within the room. I then drilled two holes between each of them and bolted them together.

August 8, 2008

The next photo shows the ten cabinets in place and bolted together. From this angle you see the room from the room's entrance.

And here's the view from the other side of the room. Both shots were taken with a wide-angle lens to show most of the room. The toe-kick ladder frame worked really well. It was relatively easy to connect all the cabinets together. For most I had to drill new holes between them because they weren't lined up with the same ones I had done during the construction of the P&C RR #4. The new layout will be built on top of these cabinets. All-in-all, the clean look of the cabinets makes the room look very nice and comfortable. I hope to maintain these clean lines in the layout on top.

This completes the room preparation phase of this project.