We are still waiting for the contractors to return to our house to finish the repairs to the basement. Last week they tore out the baseboards and drilled some holes in the sheet rock to dry them. But they won't be back until next week to finish up the repairs and clean up. Thus my basement has been left in a state of disarray.
Since my model building shop and most of my Aquia Line expansion is not accessible right now for construction work, I decided to do some benchwork building in the garage for the HO layout that will reside in my office.
Ten out of 30 inches might seem like a lot of real estate to devote to the ships that could be used for track. But displaying my ship models is one of the prime objectives of this mini layout/module. It will also be a show case for Alkem Scale Models products. And reaching in 30 inches to uncouple cars is not good. So the track will be along the front with the ships in the rear.
I had an idea to put a staging yard off the to the left. But now I am not so sure I will bother. I need to come up with a track plan that is more self contained. The track plan below shows what I was thinking.
One issue I will have is maintaining access to the electrical panel. In fact, I have had several foundation water contractors look at my house in the past few days to get quotes on how to reduce the flooding in the basement. Several have suggested the need for a separate circuit for an additional water sump pump That means my main panel will need to be expanded. Last year I added a secondary panel in my garage with 220V and 60 amps. That secondary panel used the last open spaces in my main panel.
I also want to add a whole house surge protector as we have had problems with lightning damaging the capacitor on on air conditioner.
The bottom line is the HO layout will need to be removable or at least not interfere with access to the panel. So no coved backdrop in the corner of this layout. I'll probably go with a hand painted sky and some cut outs.
m |
Hi Bernie,
ReplyDeleteYou might want to check on home building requirements with regard to access space around electrical panels. I seem to recall that at work (Raytheon) there were restrictions.
NEC quoted on line says 6’ 6” high, 30” wide, and 3” deep area centered on box. Sorry about that!
You certainly have had setbacks.
Good luck getting back to O scale progress.
Amby
I like the plan as drawn. The operational potential of having the staging I think is worth it. The plan reminds me of one that was in Model Railroad planning a number of years ago....now that I think about it it was probably one of yours.
ReplyDeleteThe electrician said one needs 30 inches of clearance around the panel. But, I now learned that I need a bigger panel with a whole house surge protector as part of our upgrade for flood protection. So I have to rethink this design as the new panel will come down lower. Oh well.
ReplyDelete