Building a shelf

Now that I have an O scale turnout and a car to go with it, I might as well realize that I want to go further down the O Scale path. So I went ahead and threw out my never finished H0 Three Yards Yard layout. I have not done anything on that layout for a year and a half! That if anything should have been an indication of that I had lost interest and needed to start on something new.

Well, with that one gone I had an empty wall with already mounted wall bands for an Elfa shelf system. Those are wall bands left there from my former Tehachapi Summit layout (Comment 17 September 2022: the blog describing this layout no longer exists). Since I had brackets laying around as well, getting a new shelf up would not be problem.

But I started by attaching my old backdrop, used both on the Summit and Three Yards Yard layouts, as seen in the picture below. It needs a fresh coat of paint, but apart from that it was all ready to go.

Next I built the shelf itself. I wanted it to be light-weight and slender looking. What I did was to attach a frame of 8 mm x 67 mm (1/4" x 2 3/4") lumber around a layer of 50 mm (2") extruded foam. And that was it. A sturdy but where light shelf, placed on the brackets. Like this:

 

It is no problem to just lift it off the brackets and down to the cupboards below when I shall work on it, if I find its normal height to awkward.

 

The O scale turnout gets company

I could not resist the urge to see some rolling stock accompany the newly built O scale turnout. So I ordered an Atlas Master series PS-4427 low side hopper which arrived today. O scale really is  impressive!

Click to get a closer view

As expected, the gauge is "correct", in the sense that the car and the track "agree" on it, but the car cannot negotiate the guard rails. Also as expected, since the guard rails are more on Proto:48 distance from the stock rail. I want to keep it that way since it looks a lot better. As a consequence, if I am serious about getting the car to roll through the turnout, the next step is to order some replacement wheel sets.

But the bearing caps are actually rotating! Cool!