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15' X 20' sized room
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<p>Some suggestions for building your benchwork, which I followed (so it MUST be right) when I built my layout. Yes, it's probably over-built, but is that bad? This IS the foundation for the entire layout on which you will be spending YEARS working on it. The reesult will be smooth curves, and low noise when operating.</p><p> 1. Mark a prefectly level line around the walls where the benchwork will hang. I used a water level instead of a conventional level. It's more work, but I'm guaranteed withing 1/8" of perfectly level over any distance.</p><p>2. Build the benchwork like you'd build a wall, using 2X4 construction. You can bang it together using a nail gun. You screw it to the wall, and install legs to hold up the front. The legs can be 2X2's. You want to build it so it cannot move no matter what you do to it.</p><p>3. At this point drill plenty of 3/4" or 1" holes in the interior 2X4's anywhere you think you may want to run wires in the future. If you have to, make it look like swiss cheese. </p><p>4. Glue and screw 3/4" type ACX plywood over the entire deck. At this point you can climb all over the layout. It'll be plenty strong to hold you up.</p><p>This is probably where you'd have your builder end, but it's all stuff you could easily do yourself.</p><p>5. Cover the plywood with butcher paper, and draw full-scale your layout. From this you will build any of your templates for the risers. </p><p>6. Where you transition up from the table top you'll cut the top and glue it to your riser and bend the plywood up for your vertical curve transition. You'll splice your risers together with scrap pieces of 3/4" plywood.</p><p>7. Overlay the entire layout with 1" foam. Noise is caused by vibrating the plywood, and the foam will help to dampin the vibrations from the trains.</p><p>8. Lay cork over the foam for your roadbeds.</p><p>I have plenty of suggestion on how to easily lay out easements and curves using pre-cut templates. I spent close to a week laying out my layout after I had already drawn it out on the computer, and my room is smaller than yours.</p><p> Have fun!</p><p>Mark in Utah</p>
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