This thing is actually starting to look like a proper layout rather than just a bunch of track on 3/4″ plywood cookie cutter. At 22:30 Friday night, I joined the upper deck fascia. The lower deck took just a bit longer – 14:00 on Saturday afternoon – because I needed to wait on some brackets to print. With that, the layout fascia is complete and I can move on to cleaning up the room, finishing electrical, and starting to shape in the terrain.
As long-time readers (or others who know me) know, I have a bit of a fascination with layout lighting and making it part of the overall operating day experience. Plus, it’s easier to work on a layout – either from a construction, detailing, or operations standpoint – when there’s excellent lighting. So in today’s post, we’re going to look at what I settled on for lighting the Copper River.
Continue readingSince 2020 is officially the year of not leaving the house, I’ve actually made some progress on the CR&NW. More of my time has gone to other projects, like resurrecting a 1940s searchlight signal in my back yard, but the layout is moving forward.
One thing that’s never been quite clear to me is how folks attach fascia board to open grid benchwork in a secure way, such that it’s solid enough to support the weight of an operator who stumbles, yet there’s enough room behind it for the mounting of controls and some modest wiring. If you just screw it straight into the front of the grid, it’s solid but there’s no room for switches and wiring. If you mount it on some standoff wooden blocks, there’s room behind, but has a lot of flex to it. Plus that’s a lot of standoff blocks to cut.
Then I realized I have a 3D printer and this seems like an excellent way to solve the problem – printed standoff brackets.
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