sliding drawer staging

[WaxonWaxov]

Hello,

Have any of you fine folks tried this?

Staging that is a basically a large sheet of plywood that slides on drawer hardware to put trains on/off differernt tracks?

My worries are:

1) the drawer moves too fast and jostles the trains (N scale) and knocks them all to Hades

2) good alignment with the entry/departure tracks on either end.

 

One thought is that I could some-how rig a geneva wheel ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_Cross_mechanism ) mechanism that could motroize the whole thing with good alignment of tracks, but 1) it might be too hard on the trains (#1 above) and two might be so darned complicated to set up it's not worth the effort

thanks

 

[maxman]

I believe that there was an article in MR that showed various methods of staging.  They had sector plates and I think one design which was basically a transfer table for entire trains.  I don't remember how the transfer table was mounted.  I think they addressed the question of track alignment.

So far as your derailing concern goes, I believe the ideas they had were manually operated, so any derailments caused by the movement of the table get classified as "operator error".

 

[cuyama]

John Signor wrote about his manually-operated version:

Railroading in a drawer
Model Railroader, December 2000

[Capt. Grimek]

Yes, this is a well done article. A friend just loaned me that issue. The diagrams are good as are the photos and he even listed some drawer slide manufactuer(s). His drawer was 16' long and he had no issues over several years. He had electrically controlled "stop pins" to align his tracks. I think I may have too many bench legs in my way to do this, but may consider an "adaptation" a few years down the road. It's worth getting ahold of a copy if you're seriously considering doing this. For now, it's cassettes/car ferry, sector plate or some other form of a "fiddle yard" for me. (Small layout, not a lot of rolling stock yet.) I was also loaned a photocopy of an article that I think was from the Dec. '08 issue of M.R. had an article "Build a Sector Plate to save Staging Space". Not positive about the issue/date but an index search will reveal all. The diagrams were confusing for me, but I'll keep looking at it for the "aha" moment.

[Annonymous]

Here's an earlier thread on the same subject, with lots of pics.

Svein

 

[HHPATH56]

I use a removable sliding drawer on my HO layout to provide access to an inaccessable area. Picture below shows the sawmill complex installed on a removable sliding drawer.

[WaxonWaxov]

Wow, that's a good thread. thanks.

 

[CSXDixieLine]

Well, here is the "mac daddy" of sliding drawer staging: the MEGA-DRAWER on Silicon Valley Lines layout:

29-page PDF document overview of the MEGA-DRAWER:
http://www.siliconvalleylines.com/downloads/SVL_MegaDrawer.pdf

MEGA-DRAWER page with photos on the SVL website:
http://www.siliconvalleylines.com/benchwork/megadrawer.html

They also have a helix that hurts my brain to comprehend. Jamie

[WaxonWaxov]

That's definetly the 'mac daddy'

 

thanks for the info.