Breaking Ground… that is, Building Benchwork

Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, I give you… General Motors.

Before you think I’ve completely lost it, I am aware that there’s nothing there but painted walls. And I’m also aware I’ve already talked about the sky.

So let me rephrase: without further ado, I give you the site for General Motors.

I talked before about trying to do things in order. In that vein:

• Before you can lay track, you need to have a surface to lay track.
• And before you can have a surface to lay track on, you need benchwork.
• And before you can have benchwork, you must have something to hold up said benchwork.
• And before you..

Well, you get the gist.

For my benchwork, I’m using a method described by Jim Six at an NMRA NER Convention some years ago. I seem to remember the Red Sox were playing a World Series game at the time of his clinic, so that probably makes it 2007. (God, I’m old.) He described it again, if in less detail, in a sidebar to his article “Planning and building a Midwestern prairie layout” in Model Railroad Planning 2010. This method uses a solid foundation (hollow-core doors with some open grid benchwork in my case) topped with a layer of pink (or blue, or green) 2″ foam topped with acoustic ceiling tiles. The tiles are put down “dark” side up, which does a pretty good approximation of dirt in a pinch before you can get actual scenery material down.

Given the relatively low weight of the benchwork, I like the idea of this. Doors are light, and braces attached to the walls (and not that many of them) would do the trick as support. I also liked the idea of braces so I could minimize the number of legs I’d need. (I hate legs.) Lance Mindheim has talked about using simple shelf braces you can find at home centers in the past. But I wanted a little more stability, so I built my own. (See the sidebar.)

I wasn’t able to eliminate legs entirely. The leftmost end of the layout has two, made from 2″x2″s. This is because the door between the layout room and the unfinished part of the basement is a pocket door. Therefore I couldn’t mount a brace at the end as any mounting screws would end up in the pocket. If I could have put one in, I would have forgone the legs completely. The result is pretty solid. While I wouldn’t stand on the layout, it does provide plenty of support. Definitely enough to support the weight of benchwork, subroadbed, track, and whatever scenery goes in. As well as the inevitable model railroaders leaning on it.

Here are some in-progress photos as I went along. The final photo shows how it looked when I was finished.

I was able to build and install the benchwork for this area over the course of a weekend. And that included adhering the foam and the ceiling tiles. Track work commenced shortly after. Note the clean look I get from not having legs.

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