Help for ceiling railroad

[wgoth]

I have been reading this forum for a while, an I know there are a lot of experts out there that will have good advice.
I am looking to build a three rail ceiling railroad in a 12' X 14' room, and have some questions.
1. What track do you recommend? I have talked to modelers who recommend Lionel Fastrac, Gargraves, Atlas, etc.
2. What roadbed works best to minimize sound, cork, rubber or ?
3. I have looked at pre-made units, Freedom and Jules, but they seem expensive, so I am thinking of making the shelving myself. Any suggestions on what type of wood to use, and how to hang on wall?
Thanks in advance for any information you may have for me.

[phillyreading]

Welcome wgoth, You can use Lionel 027 or GarGraves in 36 inch lengths. The wood size for a single track is 4inch wide by 1inch thick, 6inch wide for double track, with 3inch angle brackets or braces from Home Depot or Lowes. I measured from the ceiling because my floor was uneven in places, one foot from the ceiling. As for power you will need to run a set of wires almost all the way around to supply power to every 3 or 4 track sections, to hide the wires on the wall I painted the room over and painted the wires the same color as the walls to hide them. One most important detail: install the track on the boards before hanging the boards, you will be sorry if you lay track after hanging the wood-it takes a whole lot longer to do the project.
Lee F.

[lionelsoni]

I have a track that runs around the room, over the door and across the windows. The rail joints are all soldered. It is powered at one point only, with no voltage-drop problems in an 11x19-foot room.

The corners are spirals, with two 22.5-degree sections of O27-profile O54 flanking a 45-degree O27 section, screwed to half-inch plywood. The spiral allows the tangent track to be much closer to the wall than if I used only O27. I think it also looks better. For a more gradual curve to accommodate longer rolling stock you could use O72-O34-O72.

The tangents are K-Line 36-inch pieces fastened to 2.5-inch corner braces every foot. Each brace is slipped under the edge of a tie insulated from the center rail with black pasteboard and held by 6-32x1/4-inch screws and speed nuts. The braces are screwed to plywood or small boards fastened to the walls or stretching across the windows.

Here is a link to some pictures that David Vergun took of my layout recently, showing the overhead track:
http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?page=-1&TOPIC_ID=60920&REPLY_ID=690189#690189

[Anonymous]

I have a twin shelf, 5-track 14x28 shelf railroad built at my mountain cottage in 1992. The dual-track shelf with one siding is 7'-6" above the floor, the three-track shelf is 9'-0" above the floor.
The tracks are five separate loops and I used GarGraves flextrack. The roadbed is 3/4 plywood topped by 1/2 foam. I used decorative wooden brackets as shelf support because my wife insisted. But I have built several shelf RRs for others using white enameled steel "Maxi-brackets" which are more practical and stronger than the decorative wood brackets.
Located in my wife's kitchen with its 18' high ceiling and she wanted everything stained like her cabinets.
Originally powered by 3 pw ZWs--now TMCC with 5 PoHOs and 2 TPCs for conventional operation.

[lionelsoni]

Wayne sent me the following e-mail, which I will try to answer here:

"Thanks for the reply asking for help with my ceiling railroad. I looked at the pictures to mentioned, but could not see the ceiling railroad very well. Do you have any pictures of the corners, with the 'spirals' and how you mounted the track to the walls.
Any info will be appreciated."

I began by lining two walls with 15/32-inch BC plywood, painted white, intending to attach 36-inch K-Line O27 straights for shelves. I realized that it would be practical to make one of the shelf tracks into a loop by extending the track around the ends of the room.

The tracks are attached to the plywood, and to baseboard moldings at the ends of the room and over the windows, using 2 1/2-inch "Stanley" corner braces and 1/2-inch flathead screws into the wood. The brackets fit snugly under the rails and above the turned-out lip of the ties, with the bracket's outer screw hole centered between the outer two rails. A flathead machine screw up through the bracket hole engages a speed nut which bears on the two rail flanges. (For the shelf tracks, I used a fender washer and a machine nut; but this arrangement was a little too high for the running track.) I inserted pasteboard insulation where the bracket passes under the center rail and where the speed nut bears on the center-rail flange.

The corners are just 15/32-inch plywood shelves with the spiral curves screwed to them. The curved shelf edge follows the edge of the track. The shelves are mounted to the plywood with the same 2 1/2-inch brackets underneath or rest on notches in the molding. I painted only the bottoms and edges of the shelves.

I located the braces about every foot. I retained the track pins for their structural strength(contrary to my usual practice) and soldered all the track joints.

The spiral is a K-Line O54 curved section (22.5 degrees) on each end of a standard O27 section (45 degrees). As I mentioned, you could make a gentler curve with O72 and O34. The trick to the spiral is that the gentler curve moves the train a few inches away from the wall without making much of an overhang, so that the straight track can be very close to the wall. Then, with overhang no longer a problem, the sharper curve gets the train around most of the corner. The final gentler curve then eases the train back against the wall. It takes up more room than 90 degrees of the sharper curve, but far less than a full 90 degrees of the gentler one would.

[wgoth]

I want to thank everyone, especially Bob Nelson, for the information I received. This gives me a good idea on how install the track. I knew if I asked the question, the experts on this forum would come through.
Thanks again.
Wayne

[Brutus]

Very interesting topic == thanks for all this info!

[lionelsoni]

I had misremembered the brand of the corner braces and have corrected it in the description above.