No-Name gets Car Storage

A small industrial switching layout with no staging like my No-Name Industrial Park needs some car storage off layout, so that you can model the natural eb and flow of cars over the course of several session.  For example Cains releases 1 or 2 empty tank cars each session.  When there are only 3 left, another block of tank cars shows up on the interchange.  In the meantime those tanks have to sit somewhere.  Until now, they've been sitting on the N scale layout.  Clearly not an acceptable long term solution.

Some time ago Ben Brown showed me what he did for car storage on his Chemung Northern layout.  You can see Ben's layout in O Scale Trains issue #36.  Since that issue is sold out they've made it available for download in pdf form.  Anyway, Ben is an amazing modeller, and I thought his car storage idea was a good one, so I based my car storage on his design.

Car Storage

The design is simple.  A shelf, with groves cut for flange-ways, and a flare at the end of each grove to make it easier to get the wheels lined up right as you put a car in.  A saw cut across the the shelves near the front edge holds the car's waybill.  I wanted my storage to be at the end of the layout where the interchange track is.  I wanted it to fit under the layout, without impeding on the shelf, layout bracing, etc.  That dictated no wider than a couple feet.  And I wanted to be able to roll things under it for storage, which limited the depth to just over a foot.  Some experiments showed that a "track" spacing of 4" and a height of 5" was good enough to easily get cars in and out.  Putting all that together, I had space for 2 shelves with 6 cars on each.

The finished unit has two 24" wide by 19" deep shelves, with 5" clearance over each shelf.  I cut a slight taper in the top of the two sides, so that the unit tilts back slightly - the rear of each shelf is 1/4" lower than the front.  If a car rolls, I want it to roll in, not out.  I assembled the unit using pocket screws - 4 on each end of each shelf put in from the bottom, and 4 on the top edge of each side, put in from the outside.  The top hangs 3/4" over each side to provide a flange to screw up into the benchwork through.  I managed to get a screw near each corner up into the benchwork - considering the odd angle of the unit relative to the benchwork members it worked out surprisingly well.  Except for a piece of 1/8 paneling for the back, the whole thing is made out of 3/4 plywood left over from benchwork projects.  I may put a door that hinges at the bottom on it at some point, but for now I like it open.

The first photo shows the shallow saw cuts for the flangeways and the flare at the end pretty clearly.  The cut for the waybills is deeper - about 3/8" - to hold the bills better.  You can see that the 50 foot cars sit well back in the shelves.  The 60 foot boxcars come closer to the waybills, of course, but they still fit with a bit of room to spare.

Car storage under the interchange

The above photo shows the new car storage unit in place under the interchange track (the track with cars on it).  I think it's 12 car capacity will be enough.  Especially if I manage to avoid buying extra cars I don't need.