Page 109 - 39. MRH13-05-May2013
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two feeds on the oval in front of the switches. You can install
electrical blocks if you want. If I were to expand operations, I
would go with DCC control.
For a theme, keep it simple. Scenery from around your home-
town is a great place to start. The track plan depicts a small
town with a coal loading, a team track, and also an interchange
track. The team track and interchange track can handle a wide
variety of cars. A small layout like this is best operated with 40’
or 50’ freight cars.
Benchwork
Benchwork all will be EPS foam board. No wood is used. Where
I live in Las Vegas, Home Depot is the only place where 2’x4’
foam insulation board (white bead board) is sold. Extruded
foam board such as the pink and blue are much stronger, but
they are generally not sold to the public here, and are used by
roofing contractors only. For our purposes, EPS foam board will
work fine.
Foam provides a very dimensionally-stable benchwork. It does
not expand or contract with temperature or humidity. It comes
in two thicknesses: 1-1/2” and 2”. Also, the foam has a plastic
wrap on its outer faces that will need to be removed. You can
peel it off, but sometimes this can be a tedious process. You
will start with a base foam board of 2x4 feet. Next determine
how far you want to go below track level. Then laminate as
many foam boards to your base sheet as you will need to get
the desired depth.
Cut out any areas you want to go below track level with a key-
hole saw before you glue the foam together; do not cut your
base sheet. I use a yellow wood glue to glue the foam sheets
together. Any foam cut out can be used for land forms above
track level.
N Scale 2'X4' Layout for $500 - 5
If you have no table, you can set the layout on two 20x24x36
moving boxes from U-Haul, (wardrobe boxes), which you can
paint black for a more cosmetic look. With this method you
could scale up the layout to approximately a door-size or 4x8
with little change in cost. I would use 4’x8’ foam cut down to
the desired size, and laminated together. The resulting layout
will weigh a lot less and be more portable than using a hollow-
core door or plywood. If you want to use this method for a 4x8
layout glue a couple of 1x2 wood stringers underneath the
foam to provide enough support.
The foam boards laminated together become very strong. Glue
any excess foam to the top of your layout to form hills. The
foam can be carved into whatever landform shapes you desire.
I generally do this with a keyhole saw. This is very messy pro-
cess, so keep a garbage can and vacuum close by.
When done with the carving the shapes, cover the foam with
wet paper strips, and then cover those with plaster. You will
have a very strong layout, and the foam is a good base to insert
trees into later. The last step is to buy a sheet of hardboard
and cut out a fascia that you can glue to the sides of your foam
board for a finished look.
Track
The track is determined by the turnouts we will use. For such
a small layout, I would use Peco code 80 small-radius turnout
with insulated frogs. These small turnouts are only 3-1/2” long
with a 12” radius through the turnout.
These are power-routing with insulated frogs, so they require
no special wiring. The switches are also sprung so they can
be flipped with your finger, so no special turnout controls are
needed. For track, I would use the old standard – Atlas Code
MRH-May 2013
