The Chicken vs. the Egg

Prior to this layout, I had never built permanent benchwork for my trains. All of my boyhood layouts were “sawhorses-topped-by-plywood” affairs.

I thought briefly about buying a few books on building benchwork using the classic “L-Girder” technique, but I decided that that was a little more than we might be looking for.

I’m pretty sure that Linn Wescott wouldn’t have minded.

In constructing the benchwork, I assembled the frame on the floor, and then
temporarily balanced it on sawhorses until I could build the legs right into place.

To get started, I took out a small sketchpad and designed a simple frame made up of standard 2x4” studs. The frames themselves wouldn’t be terrifically sturdy, but once the particle board and homasote were added to the top, I was hoping we would end up with a reasonably strong structure.

After completing the initial sketches, I translated them into pencil measurements on all the boards. I then went out into the driveway with the lumber, some sawhorses, and a circular saw to make my cuts.

Since the winter of 2003-2004 was one of the coldest in the past 25 years, this was no easy task!

After the cuts were made, the pieces were brought back into the house, laid out in order, and assembled into frames and tables.

The first thing I discovered was, if you’re depending on the table top to provide support to the underlying frame and legs — and vice versa — you’ll tend to wind up with a perplexing chicken vs. egg scenario. It proved to be quite difficult to get the table frames, tops, and legs all lined up and square so that everything could be screwed together.

Still, I’m proud to say that the final product pretty much came together as designed.

All four of my daughters actively participated in the construction of the layout.
In this photo, oldest daughter Meg learns how to use a drill to make pilot holes
and drive home the screws needed to attach the table tops.
We used ceramic-coated decking screws to facilitate both assembly – and the inevitable disassembly.

One thing I hadn’t planned on was that our living room floor isn’t level!

The uneven floor is located in the portion of the house that was built in 1805. There’s a 1-2” bow in the floor over the length of the 12’ table. This bow was particularly pronounced under the left table and I had to cut an additional table leg to accommodate the difference.

The finished benches looked like this...

Note the ½" of air under the center leg! Note the belated use of the level!

and this...

The Christmas candles in the window give some idea of our pace...

Once the tables were assembled and leveled, we put a layer of sound-deadening homasote on top of the particle board. The homasote was painted a bright green similar to the bases of many Lionel accessories such as the 145 Gateman, 153 Block Signal, etc.

Daughters Claire and Jane paint the edge of the table top so that no exposed wood
would show after the table-to-floor curtain was added.

I decided to go with a bright green surface because of an article I had read in Classic Toy Trains several years ago. The article’s author made the statement that a neutral (if unrealistic) color for a table top allows “the toy trains to be the stars of the show.”

Everyone, including 6-year-old Lucy, got to take a turn at painting. Despite the
apparent flimsiness of the drop cloth, the hardwood floors made it through with no casualties.

Once our tables were finished, our tops were painted, and all our construction materials were cleaned up, we were ready to see if the track plans we had sketched on paper would look good in “real life”.