Monday, August 15, 2011

Steel benchwork

This weekend was a very productive time for the Bogong & Geehi. I decided to build one of the peninsula's that extend into the room. As my friends know I am much happier working with steel than wood for my bench work.With this extension I decided to slightly change how I have been doing things. To this point in time I have been making the layout modular, which is handy if I want to move the layout or make changes. The disadvantage of modular systems is that it is harder to build odd shaped modules and there is a lot of extra work.

For this peninsula it needed to vary in width quite a bit as the turn back curves take up a lot of space. I also wanted the area underneath to be clear as I want to have a lounge suite in the room for the kids to come and watch TV while I am working in the shed. I have made some changes to the trackplan which shifted Mt Bogong onto the peninsula with the hidden staging underneath. The staging will be part of a return loop and I will no longer have continuous running.

Putting this all together with modules was always going to be difficult so it didn't take me a lot of convincing to make this peninsula a permanent construction. It took longer to design than build but I have been able to achieve all that I wanted. I used 100mm x 50mm for the uprights and then welded 50mmx 50mm for the cross members.

Apologies for the quality of the photo but it shows you what I have done better than I can explain. The level on the lower left is the staging with Mt Bogong above. When completed you won't be able to see Mt Bogong from this angle as it will be behind a backdrop. The area in front of the upright will be the turnback curve and I have yet to build the benchwork for it.

After I had finished building on Sunday afternoon I couldn't help myself, I had to see how the Mt Bogong mining company was going to look in place.

Again not a great photo, but I am happy with how the model looks. While it is big it doesn't overwhelm the area.

All in all, a very satisfying weekend.

Cheers Murray

2 comments:

  1. Wow! I could only dream about having that much space to build a model railway in.

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  2. One of the advantages of living on a farm is that I can have a shed as big as I like (as long as it fits the budget:-))building a layout this size to the standard I want is a bit daunting though...

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