Cabinet Making Part 2

Well, Louis-Marie is quite motivated lately and almost completed the car drawers and the DCC cabinet.

Let's start with the DCC cabinet.

To turn on the layout, you now only have to use a small switch. No need to play directly with the equipment as it use to be. A small green LED let you know if power in on or off.

When you open the door, you have access to a programming track and a space to store power cabs.

 
The programming track is a short stretch of track pinned on the door itself.


Some storage space for club comptability and layout documentation is available under the cabinet on shelves.

Next one, the car drawer. Looks good on photo, but far better in real. Each drawer can hold about 30 50ft cars. About 150 cars in total and there's still place to add more drawer. Top drawer is for locomotive.

The ingenuity of Louis-Marie expresses itself at best inside the drawers. He used scraps of 2"x3" lumber and cut them diagonal in half. He then fixed them in such a way cars can be easily displayed when the drawer is opened.

 
Once done, these display "steps" will be fully lined with protective foam sheeting. Let's be honest, it is no new, we already used this method for our original drawers, but never at this extent. I've yet to see another layout equipped with such steps. They have many advantages over simple drawers. Not only you can see better the car you want to choose, but they can't enter in contact, reducing wear and risk to break the small details. It isn't suited for locomotives with lots of details, but do wonder for freight and passenger equipment.

The most amazing thing with all these new improvement is the fact they didn't cost a single penny. Both the cabinet and drawers were made out of recycled stuff that could have ended in the fire pit or garbage bin nest summer.

By the way, I started to build some scenery work on Rivière de la cabane aux Taupiers. Regular and floral foams were used to shape general landforms according to prototype pictures. My goal is now to start working scenery from the staging area and continue toward Villeneuve as the year pass by. No real specific objectif, only moving forward. The next challenge will be to build a large highway overpass over the staging area.