There were two design challenges I faced. The first was I knew I wanted the height to be adjustable between 40″ and 50″ +/- 1″ at those two heights. Remember the yard lead and connecting module to the Free-mo layout and club layout is a standard sized frame that has those adjustable legs. I could use the same system but did not want to for several reasons. One, it was a larger module (about 5′ x 6′) and I want to keep it horizontal (another reason.) At work I have access to some nice pallets and those seem like a sturdy base. (I had to rebuild it but more on that later.) If I put large wheels on a pallet that has a plywood base, not only could I transport the module easily but also some of the boxes with associated items for the module. BTW the first show I took it to I unloaded it and set it up by myself. It worked great but I’m getting ahead of myself.
The second challenge was having the large base and how to support it. I believe I mentioned it elsewhere but there is ZERO selective compression. What that means is when modeling the prototype (the railroad in the real world), if you take the plans and scale them to HO (1:87.1) a typical train yard would still be too long for the space we have to build it. Before this project I designed a very small yard nearby and without compressing it it was 16′ long. Doable in some situations but to make it fit better one might reduce the length of some of the tracks. In this case however, it is right at five feet wide and I knew I could get high quality plywood that is 5×5 instead of the typical 4×8. The length is about six feet so I would just need a little more at the end where the yard tracks are straight.
You can see in the image above that I planned for the cross bracing and had to be strategic because of the many turnouts. There are 30 I have to worry about. I plan to use Tortoise switch machines so their placement below the throw bar of the turnout was important to not interfere with the bracing. There are only a couple that will be off to the side rather than directly below. Also some have to face each other where the throw bars of one turnout is inches from another.
The way I designed it works for me because it will fit in my trailer perfectly. As an alternative option the legs can be folded and it can sit on one side vertically but that is not preferred. It is how I can get it into my train room that has a normal sized door but at train shows I can just roll it out when it is horizontal. Below are a few pictures with captions and after that some more explanation about the leg system.
I spent a long time trying to figure out how to do the adjustable legs. I wanted to do something where they telescoped into itself with pins at certain heights. They could also be made out of wood doing a similar thing. I also realized that I could store it in the trailer if needed but I would never really work on it there or in the garage where I first thought I had to. I was able to open a spot in my train room in the center where it would fit perfectly (barely) and I could work on it there. But it had to be able to fit through a narrow doorway which meant turning it sideways and preferably without the legs, or at least folded or removable.
I really like the black pipe legs but changing out the height would be hard unless 1/2″ slid into 3/4″ with pins or something. Also, it would not be easy to remove to go through small doors. The folding table is what I decided to use. The problem was most options did not have two settings exactly 10″ apart. I finally found one that did and of course it was more expensive than most of the others the same size but it’s what I needed.
For the base I used this pallet with wheels. At one of the shows (the third one) the wood broke where the wheel attached. I was able to make it work for the show but getting it back into the trailer was hard. The pallet also bowed a little so I had been wanting to replace it. I used strong 3/4″ plywood to make strips that I replaced the cheap wood and reinforced the structure. I’ll add pictures of that later.
Below shows how I took the top off the folding table and added risers to get to the correct height. The connecting module was a little high in the photos but lines up perfectly. For transportation there is a 3×3-ish block to raise the legs so that the connecting module sits vertically on the side of the pallet. Then a few boxes can go underneath. When setting up at shows 1/8″ strips are used to fine-tune the height of the module.
