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So the first thing that
I did was to pick up a couple of aluminum briefcases on eBay. One would be
used for carrying the power supply and the trains that I wanted to use in
the layout. The other would have the insides stripped out and used for the
layout.
Although I got each of
these on eBay for just a few dollars, the shipping - on each! - was $20! I'm
beginning to think that people could give away their stuff and make a profit
just by charging for so-called "shipping and handling."
So I removed the unnecessary
lining and stuff from one briefcase. I wasn't sure that I needed to take out
that black lining, but I wanted to make sure the inside was as large as possible.
This made room for a layout that could be as large as 16 1/2 x 12 3/4 inches.
The "bottom" of the briefcase was 1 3/4 inches deep, with an additional
inch in the top.
Because the fabric in
the lower part was held in with something like contact cement - which was
still sticky - I lined the bottom and sides with white contact paper to avoid
sticking me or anything else to the insides while working on the layout -
and to make sure that the layout itself could be removed after insertion if
needed.
The briefcase was definitely
smaller than the oval of track that I had on my dining room table. So the
question was, what could I do in such a small space? The answer was, "Not
much!"
To find out what track
would fit in this small space, I purchased a Marklin "Track Planning
Game" from Euro Rail Hobbies (about $30). This isn't really a game -
it's a big assortment of plastic track - straight track, curved track, turnouts,
and a few other odds and ends.
Each piece is half the size of real Marklin track and is marked on the
underside with the Marklin part number that it corresponds to.
I drew a rectangle on
a piece of paper half the size of the inside of my briefcase and checked to
see what size track would fit. Turns out that I need to use two semicircles
of 8510 curved track (5 3/4 inch radius) connected at each end by a piece
of 8503 straight track (2 3/16 inch). The dark objects every couple of inches
around the track are piers to raise one end of the loop just to see how that
would look.
So my layout will resemble
what I have on the dining room table now, but even smaller. After realizing that
I would only be able to have a small, simple layout - even though I'd seen
more complex layouts available (Noch has some available) - I checked and found
that the "briefcase" layouts had dimensions of 20 x 15 or 30 x 20
inches. I haven't found any briefcases this large. These layouts are more
of a "suitcase" size than a briefcase.
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