Ken Zieska brought his small, meant for children to operate, S Scale layout to the World's Greatest Hobby Show held Nov 21, 22 in St Paul. During my time manning the layout, I was amazed at how much fun the kids were having operating this layout.
So I decided to throw together a layout for my two grandsons as a Christmas gift. I put this together, working a couple of hours per day over the last week or so. Similar to Ken's, I used a 4x8 sheet of 2 inch thick extruded poly insulation (the "pink stuff") and built a frame around it using 2x2's and 1x4's purchased from Home Depot. The the actual dimensions of 1.5 x 1.5 and .75 x 3.5 were perfect as the supporting frame of 2x2's with the two inch insulation board exactly brought the insulation board flush with the top of the frame. Here are links to two photos showing the finished product: http://home.comcast.net/~sscale/Trains/Layout1.JPG http://home.comcast.net/~sscale/Trains/Layout2.JPG Please forgive the quality. The area in my basement where I built the layout has poor lighting, I don't have any fancy lighting systems and I just shot some quick flashes. My thought process is that I can "play trains" with the kids the usual around the track at "flyer speeds" and the AF operational accessories. Eventually, I will bring a DCC booster over and begin to teach them some operation activities using the two sidings on the S Helper track layout. I did a very small amount of schenery as you can see to wet their appetite for that activity as well. So that mom and dad can store the layout when not in use (it is relatively light, the whole thin is supported on a pair of folding banquet legs which were also purchased at Home Depot. I was a little concerned as the online reviews for these legs were "digital" - people either loved them or hated them. All commented about no instructions and the haters talked about holes being improperly drilled. The two pieces of each leg seemed to go together just fine so I wondered about this hole drilled wrong situation. I discovered what they were talking about only when it came time to mount the legs on the board and check the collapsibility. The are 4 mounting pads for each leg with two screw holes in each mounting pad. I mounted them such that the legs where straight up and down when mounted on the board. When I tried to collapse the legs, I found you could only unhinge them about half way. The pivot points are all wrong! Experimenting with the unmounted leg on the bench, I found that the mounting pads are roughly 10 1/2 inches apart when collapsed but only 8 1/2 inches apart when full erect. Oh well - ran out of time to fix properly. ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
