Main staging yard bench work - Part 1

In my last post I had just brought home the first sheet of plywood for building layout bench work.  Since that time, I have been able to spend several very pleasant afternoons building the first phase of the main staging yard section.  At 10 feet, 4 inches long it is likely going to be the largest single section.

In this first phase of building the staging yard,  I built the deck of the lower level.  To determine the size and shape of the upper deck, I needed to pencil in all the tracks and determine how many staging tracks and their spacing.  Also, the placement of the turnout motors and any linkages had to be considered.


I settled on a 22 inch width for the main part of the yard, 5 staging tracks for the SP on the lower level and 4 for the WP on the upper level.  Shown here is the end that balloons out to 32 inches where each of the lines will loop back at a 14 inch radius.

Here is a closer view of this part of the yard.  The green pencil lines represent the upper level and the red pencil lines represent the lower level.  The paper turnout templates were printed from the Fast Tracks web site.

The entry end of the yard will partly extend over onto the outer part of the helix with only two turnouts for each line actually being in the yard section. Here I had accidentally placed two templates on a blue pencil line and crossed them out in Photoshop.  That particular blue line represents the division between the lower and upper levels.

This view shows what the underside of the yard module looks like.  I found some large shelf brackets at the local hardware store that were just right for this application.  There's enough room between the brackets for my big train cabinet or other large items.

Ready for that next sheet of plywood !