SPECS & CONSTRUCTION (Blunders)

Name: PRSL
Scale: N 1:160
Dimensions: 12' x 17' loft
Prototype: Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines in Westville, & Woodbury, NJ
Era: 1950s
Style: Shelf around the wall
Min Radius: 19" mainline
Control: DC
Track: Atlas Code 80

Construction (i.e. Construction Blunders)

My wife had major back surgery which meant we had to leave our large Colonial 2 story to go to a home with a single floor living area. Few houses we looked at had basements but we found one with a loft that I could annex for modeling purposes. It is in a 55 and older community in which we are the “new kids” in town. Unfortunately the community seems to have no model railroaders that I can locate. (There was one up the street but he has since been moved to a nursing home. J)

My “new” loft presents some different challenges from my old basement (how I miss it!).

To get a sky background, the old basement walls were painted with a standard light blue waterproofing paint. I figured I’d try to get a better color match for the loft walls. I had a picture of our new house that I had taken on an absolutely stunningly beautiful day. I was using it for my computer background picture. So I figured I would try to match it. Now this is an adventure since I am partially color blind. In my world, light greens look white and I can’t distinguish between certain shades of green/brown and blue/purple. Naturally my favorite color is dark green (which I can’t always distinguish from black under certain light). So this was an adventure waiting to happen. Being somewhat sensible I recruited my wife (that is why we get married, isn’t it). Off to Home Depot for color cards. Ever try to match color cards to a picture on the computer screen? They just do not match! So we picked the closest paint we could get.

Speaking of colors, I figured the fascia on my old layout should be a dark green. I picked a ping-pong table top green (remember the color-blindness) and everyone in the family hated it. So my analytical noggin decided to blend it in with the Woodland Scenics colors on the layout. I picked their standard dark green. I coated a 3x5 index card with scenic cement and covered it with WS dark green grass and went off to Home Depot again. I ordered a can of their cheapest flat paint to match the green. Ha! They couldn’t match it with their cheapest paint and had to take a step up to the Behr paint line and even then they said they had to max out the paint pigments to get a match. Nothing is ever simple in life.

Having only a 12’x17’ space and needing room for other things, I decided that to maximize the space, I would line the room with my 3’ wide by 3’ high metal (simulated wood grain) shelving units. I could thereby store my books, DVDs and train stuff (40 years of collecting) under the layout and go around the room with a shelf layout. Phil Duba had told me his proposed layout would use shelving brackets and that seemed like a great idea. Until I investigated and saw how much they cost. Back to the drawing board.

I figured I could create wood benchwork that would straddle the bookshelves so I again went off to home depot and purchased 2x4s for legs, 1x3s for longitudinal support and a 4’x8’ sheet of plywood. I had them cut the plywood into (3) 16”x6’ sections with a 2’x4’ leftover piece. That began a series of design blunders.

I purchased ¾” plywood. (Way to heavy and inflexible.) The tracks going over timber creek have to rise to the bridge and the coal trestle has a sharp incline. To get the wood to be more flexible I used a router on the underside to cut groves in those sections so the plywood would bend. Keep in mind that I had already installed track and used Sculptamold for the highway overpass! Dumb! Dumb!

The wood benchwork design also showed lack of foresight. The bookshelves to be covered were 12” deep so a 16” shelf railroad should easily straddle it, right? Wrong! The legs (2x4) go inside the 1x3 frame (16” – ((3/4” + 1½”) x 2) = 12½”. Press fit!!! (And the book case corners stick out even further.) To get the bookcases out, I will have to disconnect the 6’ layout pieces and tilt everything to the floor and pull the bookcase from between the legs. (I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Commerce & Engineering, a Masters of Divinity degree and a PhD in stupidity!) Oh well, it is what it is. If it ever becomes necessary to get the bookshelves out I can at least reach the screws for the front legs and the cross-bar supports and free the bookcases (carefully) that way.