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Fitting out The Shed [Was: Unconverted loft? Expensive shed?]


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Was the flammables locker a requirement of the insurance company or something you decided you should have? Interesting as there are probably hundreds or modellers like me who have all kinds of dangerous chemicals sat together on the workbench/on shelves without any thought about the consequences if something went wrong.

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The cabinet was not an insurance requirement: I just searched for a suitable cabinet for storing flammable materials (especially the thinner, naphtha, which is especially flammable) and found this one and others like it, primarily intended for use in the workplace, but I see no reason in principle why it should not be equally suited to a domestic environment save that I have no use for the locking mechanism.

 


 

Last week, I took delivery of a consignment of Really Useful Boxes for my rolling stock storage:

 

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I have them on castors so that I can move them about beneath my layout when it is built, allowing me to access any part of the underneath of the layout for wiring and maintenance purposes.

 

I have fitted them out with Ten Commandments foam inserts thus:

 

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This is vastly easier than taking items of rolling stock out of individual boxes. I also acquired to-day some more basic plastic boxes (without wheels, etc.) in which to store my empty boxes, which I will keep in the loft.

 

I am still waiting for the foam inserts for most of the 00 gauge stock to arrive, so I have not been able to remove these from their boxes yet.

 

I am still awaiting my other storage facilities, being some Bisley drawers on castors and some cupboards/shelves on castors for housing things such as the Bench Vent (which I tried to-day for the first time: it is really quite effective), soldering iron, reels of wires, etc.. The Bisley drawers will house the smaller items so that I do not have to rummage in a plastic box for them.

 

I have for the first time to-day used the shed for some actual modelling work (some more renumbering, this time of a Bachmann Atlantic from 2421 "South Foreland" to 2426 "St. Albans Head", as well as re-varnishing a Farish 47 that had not been properly varnished previously): it is a much more suitable location than my study, and the idea of having the plain grey floor to show up any dropped small items seems to work very well so far, provided that the floor is kept clean.

 

The combination of Bench Vent, breathing mask, modelling mat and large waterproof tablecloth (not pictured) seems to work well to allow indoor spray painting/varnishing, which is, at this time of year especially, much more satisfactory than doing it outside.

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I am doubtful that silica bags would do much good, as I do not think that the boxes are airtight, so they would just be extracting moisture from the air in the shed generally and would quickly become spent.

 

As to acid free paper, may I ask what the benefit of that would be?

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I'm sending you a PM with a couple of attachments.  The issue was described in Model Rail over a couple of months and was mostly in connection with bubble-wrap damaging the paint surface, I don't know if the foam units you've chosen might react with the paint or plastic or maybe attract moisture, but with the care you're taking I thought a couple of quid outlay on the paper might save a nasty surprise.  The silica gel sachets don't have to be airtight to work.

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Thank you very much for that information: that is most useful. The articles described the unfortunate effect of tightly wound bubble wrap sticking to acrylic paint/varnish and peeling it away when the bubble wrap was removed.

 

In my case, I am not using bubble wrap, but open cell foam in liners specifically intended to be used in the application of storing model rail items without their manufacturers' boxes. The chemistry of the foam is likely to be sufficiently different that the bubble wrap specific issue does not seem likely to affect this form of storage, especially as I do not currently have any models painted with acrylic paint. Given that the main purpose of storing the items this way is convenience and that using the acid free paper would be very inconvenient, I do not think that I will be doing this, although I do note the issue with bubble wrap/acrylic paint and will take particular care to avoid this in future.

 


 

Some of the 1:76/00 size foam inserts arrived to-day, so I was able to pack my remaining 1:76 scale/00 gauge vehicles:

 

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This allows me to clear most of the manufacturers' boxes ready to be transported to the attic.

 

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The fitting out of the shed is nearing completion: all that remains to be done (aside from layout construction, of course) is:

 

(1) take delivery of the bins (one for recycling and one for general waste) and put them in place next to my desk/workbench;

(2) take delivery of and position the Bisley multi-drawers on casters and fill them with contents in place of the plastic boxes;

(3) take delivery of the cupboards/shelves and fill those with contents;

(4) put all of the locomotive manuals into clear plastic folders and put those folders in a suitable ring binder to go on one of the shelves (these are on order);

(5) put the empty rolling stock boxes into the attic; and

(6) fetch down my label printer from the attic and set this up to print labels for my stock storage boxes/Bisley drawers/etc.

 

Once those things are done, the focus will move away from the shed construction/fitting out and onto the layout building (and therefore into different forum topics).

 

Here is a 3d render of how the space is currently planned to be used (showing more storage cabinets than I have ordered so far to show how many that the space can accommodate if needed)

 

Shed%20interior.png

 

The large flat brown horizontal box part way up the wall represents the baseboards for the planned N gauge layout.

 

As will be seen, there is a large area of space underneath the planned 00 gauge layout which currently has no planned use. In the short term, this will be taken with the test layout on its trestle table as shown in the above pictures, to which I plan to add a short section of 00 gauge test track for DCC programming 00 gauge locomotives, and similarly an EM gauge test track for like purposes (as I am involved in the construction of an EM gauge layout in a model railway club of which I am a member).

 

In the longer term, I am minded to put another, smaller layout there, but I plan not to decide finally what it should be until the other two layouts are at a more advanced state of construction so that I can have a better idea of what else would work with my own preferences. Possibilities in contemplation at present are narrow gauge, Victorian suburban either in N or 00 gauge (a "Minories" style layout in 00 gauge will just about fit, albeit with awkward fiddle yards involving a switchback and 483mm curves), or a London Underground based layout. What I do build there may well depend on whether it turns out that I am any good at building kits as many of these ideas will involve kit building a high proportion of the rolling stock.

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1 hour ago, hayfield said:

I went to Ikea today, vast amount of storage units, so many I was spoilt for choice and could not make up my mind which I preferred best

 

There is much to be said for storage units with castors (so that they can go under the layout but be moved easily from under the layout when work needs to be done there), which will help to narrow the field considerably, I expect.

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Going back to the in shed paint storage, We used a couple of old but working Fridges. one for paint one for... Well SWMBO wan't impressed when she opened the bigger one to find it full of Cider...

 

Being in a fridge reduces the evaporation of volatile substances.

 

We also have an old upright freezer hidden round the back that doesn't work for storing house hold paints,  if we had children in the vicinity that would be padlocked..

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have now installed the Bisley drawers and one of the two cupboards that I had ordered: the other cupboard, for my Bench Vent, is coming the week after next. It is a happy thing that things in the shed are now increasingly orderly as all the various piles of things assume their permanent and properly systemised homes.

 

I have also installed a label printer and used it to print labels for the drawers and stock boxes.

 

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I have also added a straight piece of OO gauge track to my test layout to act as a DCC test track for the OO gauge layout; shown here with a King Arthur class that has yet to have its detailing pack fitted:

 

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25 minutes ago, chris p bacon said:

 

With all that storage are you going to have enough room :D

 

maybe another shed is on the horizon....

 

On the horizon is no good - it'd be too long a walk from my back door.

 

(The idea of the storage is that it will fit underneath the lower, N gauge baseboards but be wheelable so that I can move it away from any part of the baseboards to enable me to work beneath them).

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  • 1 month later...

I now have my cupboard for the Bench Vent, which completes the basic, pre-baseboard fit out of the shed. Pictured is the bench vent in action and the bench vent cupboard after the bench vent has been put away (the paint stained cutting mat on the top would normally go in the drawer, but I was waiting for the paint to dry).

 

On the workbench is a 3d print of an LNER quint-art carriage being painted BR maroon for a club layout set in east London in the 1960s. The tablecloth protects my desk and equipment from paint when the bench vent is in use. It is stored in the bench vent cupboard at other times.

 

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Edited by jamespetts
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13 minutes ago, michl080 said:

 

good to see that there is at least a little bit of wire chaos visible on your circuit.

Seeing my own workbench in comparission to your very tidy environment depressed me a lot.

 

Michael

 

I shall take that as a compliment!

 

The circuit to the right is my test layout as you may have gathered. I hope that my actual layouts will be rather tidier than this; there is much to be learnt from the test layout.

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