Mountable cabinets

This appeared in Modelspoormagazine 82, a correction in n° 84. More text and illustrations can be found there...

As a model railroader we, after some time, acquire quite many models. A handy way to display these is by making cabinets, that are suspendable at a wall, and connectable to your layout. Such a presentable storage can be home-built, too…

Your rolling stock gets dirty when put on the tracks for a long time, especially when you're working on the layout. If you don't have too many models, you can use their original cases to store them. But, when there are attributes attached to them, or your models consists of a pre-mounted trainset, this can't be done. Display shelves are an option then, but taking your coupled train to the layout isn't often straightforward.to do. Therefore I made seperate shelve cases, each with a piece of track, connectable to my layout. These are the specifications of the system I wanted:

I chose for two L-profiles: one in wood, another in plexi glass. Both materials are easy to use, affordable and not too heavy. As the cabinets should be easy to open, I used small U-shped styrene strips as a small gutter. A simple rack system was adapted to hold the cabinets against a wall. This wall is the upper part of my staircase.

What did I need?

• Clear L-profiles, ordered from a plastics company. For my H0-system, they are 3mm thick, outside measures 45x70mm, 240cm long.
• 6mm MDF sheets, sawed to size: 50 and 81mm wide, 244cm long.
• Common, 4mm thick male and female connectors, 0,5mm² electric wire
• A simple rack support system
• U-shaped styrene profiles, 5x2,5mm
• Flexible rails, I used Roco-Line.
• For the catenairy: 0,8mm steel and copper wire
• Silicon rubber and casting plastic, glue, paint, nails, cork, foam rubber, …

Costs for one meter length: about 15 Euro (mainly due to the choice of the track)

The cabinet end parts are made from pieces of wood. Two small pieces are glued to a larger one, I used a simple spacer to get the position right. These small parts will get a piece of foam rubber later on, to stop a car gently at the end of the cabinet track.

A shelve system will be fixed to the back side of the wooden L-profile. I made a 3mm wide, 3mm deep gutter with a sawblade, and cut the metal parts of the shelve holders to fit. Measuring their exact location is important.

This cut-off metal part is firmly connected in the backside of the wooden part.

I used hot-glue for this connection, a serious mistake. On a (hot) summer day, the glue melted a bit, enough to cause the cabinets to fall down. Some models were badly damaged.

I solved this by adding a metal clamp to hold the metal shelve parts and using a different type of glue. At both sides of the slope, I drilled two sunken holes.

Two M3-sized, 15mm long bolts are fixed at the rear with washers and nuts. Now we can fill the front side holes with some putty, so the bolt's heads are invisible.

The shelve supports are glued, two large bent washers hold a thick steel wire. This wire is shoved through a pre-drilled hole in the steel support. The larger washers are tightened using another pair of M3 nuts.

Now we can assemble the wooden parts of the cabinet, using carpenter's glue and some smalle nails.

I used 3 connections, the third to detect if the train is near the end of the track. To align the male connectors, I made a master model from styrene sheets and cut, glued and filed it to shape.

The layout "docking part" is made from wood. It holds the (larger) female connectors, so this part has to be milled to shape.

Some other pieces of wood form a Z-shaped "floor" for both the receiving track and the "docked" cabinet. The holes for the female connectors are filed to shape.

To the left and right, glued wooden plates make the "dock" more solid. To align the female connectors, I used the male master model

As the receiving track is located in a tunnel, I painted it black. This "dock" is now used to align the casted male connectors on the cabinet's bottom sides.

After sanding the connector-holders, shove the male connector in place, but not too deep: There should be room to allow some adjustiing..

Using “hot-glue”, the male connector is attached to the cabinet's end. Put glue to the cabinet's bottom, and press it firmly inside the docking part, which has the connector previously inserted. Soon, the cabinet is fixed to the connector "in it's exact spot".

A layer of cork forms a subroadbed. To position the rails, I made a small wooden mould, in which I drilled holes to position the wiring.

Positioning the track is started from the connector's side. The rail ends are at best about 2mm "over the edge", thus making sure the future junction is reliable. When this positioning is done well, the wooden helper is used to align the track throughout the rest of the cabinet.

Let's finish the track's other side: A small piece of foam-rubber, a glued cushion, makes sure a car or loc coupling doesn't get hurt when touchng the backside of the cabinet.

The L-shaped transparent hoods are cut to length, using a fine-tooth handsaw. To make these removable, I used small U-shaped profiles to snap them in.

These gutters are fixed with transparent contact glue.While this sets, we can connect the track wires to the connector.

If you use a catenary on your layout, you should also have one in your cabinets. I used straightened copper wire, glued through small holes in the hood's top. The mould, used to position the tracks now serves to locate these holes.

0,8mm thick steel wire is used to make shapes like the picture shows. These will be placed at the cabinet's end, and at the layout's docking part to make a smooth transition between the cabinet's catenary and the one from the layout.

With the catenary part in position, the docking part is now attached and connected to the layout. Make an extra (removable) support, so a "docked" cabinet sits level.

With each cabinet constructed, they are gradually attached to the wall using the shelve support system.