For reference, my bill of materials is available here.
Basement Prep
After operating on many layouts where the basement had not been finished and I was spending hours standing on concrete floors, I decided that I would not start my layout until my basement was finished. The basement walls could have been done with metal studs, but because I knew I wanted to drill into them, I had the contractor use wood studs for the walls. I also had the contractor install two separate 15 amp circuits in the center of the east wall that could be used to power the layout and accessories like lights.
The basement also includes a home theater area that I'm planning to use as a crew waiting area. The projector can be used to show a PC screen, in case I get to the point of wanting to show the dispatch board or some sort of electronic crew call board there.
Another thing to remember is that sump pumps tend to fail over time. In my case, mine had worked since 2001 and decided to fail shortly after we got the basement finished. The sump pump has a battery backup and is now on a replacement schedule.
One downside of our basement is that when the west wall was finished, it had to come out about a foot to cover up the sewer pipes that jutted out from the wall. The result was that the stair landing was particularly snug... only about 30" wide. This put a limit on the size of the lumber I would be able to bring downstairs.
Closetmaid Brackets
Working under the assumption that I would not be in this house forever, I designed the layout in sections that would be reasonably easy to remove. I saw a fellow modeler have to destroy part of his layout to get it out of his basement and wanted to be able to preserve as much of mine as possible when I move out of the current house.
In addition, I looked at the various multi-deck layout designs and thought that using the Closetmaid brackets would be easier than engineering a wooden support system. While I haven't done the math, my guess is that the Closetmaid brackets added some expense, but they're dead simple to install. I could have even added a third low deck simply by using taller standards. In addition, I didn't want to completely destroy the drywall in the basement. Patching some screw holes and some tunnel "portals" seemed far simpler and required much less lumber.
Most of the standards are 30", but I have a few taller ones where I planned to put shelves near the power circuits. I drilled each standard into the wood stud using long deck screws. I'd recommend getting the square drive screws to avoid stripping them, which I did frequently with plain wood screws. When putting up the standards, I initially tried to laser level on the top of the bracket. However, I found that laser leveling the screw hole worked better and made for a more level structure.
Before I committed to the height, I created a couple of modules and then moved the brackets up and down to make a final decision about section heights. When doing this, make sure you take into account how tall you are, how high you intend to make your fascia, etc. It's impossible to do this, I think, without creating a mockup like I did. I ended up being happy with a 36" lower deck height and a 57" upper deck height.
In the previous picture, you can see that I used different length horizontal brackets based on how wide the benchwork section would be. The longest bracket is about 20" long, and my widest benchwork section is 36" wide on the lower deck of the north wall. For the wider sections, I added legs on the front of the modules to help provide stability.
I made these legs from 2x2 lumber, but in other modules, I switched to 2x3 lumber, since the 2x2 lumber tended to be very crooked. I made leg pockets like these and used leveling glides on the bottom of the legs to account for variations in the floor height. The legs can slide out of these pockets if needed.
Benchwork Sections
I have two styles of benchwork sections so far. The first is a closed box made of 1x4 pine with a 1/2" plywood top and a 1/2" Homasote piece on top of that. The box has cross pieces made of 1x4 pine for added stability. I'm using these sections for my staging yards, main yard, and industrial switching districts.
These are simple to build, even for a relative novice carpenter like myself. Take your time, measure twice, cut once, and don't assume that the wood or your walls will always be straight and square.
In order to secure these sections to the Closetmaid brackets, I had to add in a cross member, as shown here.
I also needed to shim between the bracket and the wood because my first wall brackets were not aligned as well as they should have been. I used small pieces of Masonite and put screws through the holes in the brackets into the wood to lock the sections in. As I did the east wall and used a different way to line up the holes, the amount of shimming I needed to do dropped dramatically.
The second type of module I created was more of an "open grid" style module, as shown here:
The box is still made from 1x4 pine and the top is 1/2" plywood cut with a jigsaw. I added additional 1/2" plywood pieces to level the plywood with the previous plywood + Homasote sections. Since these sections were much lighter than the sections with the Homasote and plywood tops, I only used a couple of brackets to hold each one up. In addition, I dispensed with the cross piece the length of the section and put up a piece of 1x4 material where the bracket connected with the section, similar to this one shown here:
After getting the modules into place and leveling them, I bolted them to each other and then drilled holes for wires to pass between sections. I only have one hole now, but I may end up adding a smaller one towards the front/aisle of the module to run my DCC RJ12 cable through, simply to keep it out of the way of the power wires.
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