Look Me in the Eyes

So I'm doing a pile of maintenance on my N scale locos at the moment and a big bug bear is that when doing the coupler trip pin height, it is damned hard to see accurately their height above or below the track when you have to bend down to table height or awkwardly pick them up with a small piece of track. So...

It was time to make something. But it can't take up all of my benchspace even though it would need a good footing so as to not fall over when being used.  So out with some power tools and such and the attack of the 6 mm plywood began.  The design mutated as it went along, as they always do.  But simple should do the trick here.

So I made the shelf 42 cm wide, 42 cm high and 20 cm deep.  Pretty stable enough on its feet and light and can be put away over the top of a lot of other stuff in my storage racks when not in use.  I just used my little plunge saw and cut up the bits of ply from a small sheet I already had on hand in the shed.

I then sanded the edges and sides to remove all the daggy bits and got to gluing it together.  My old scuba diving lead weights do come in handy for holding things down.

I used some 12 mm triangle strip to bolster the joins and again used the lead to hold them down until the glue dried, thereby giving a good solid join.

Once the white glue had dried for a day, I took it outside for a good orbital sanding.

Then it was inside for a good lick of water based One Coat Clear to give it a reasonable look.  Even though it really doesn't need a coat of paint, it makes it look better to me.

Came up pretty good in fact. Should look good in amongst the stuff on my work benches.

Now, the job isn't finished yet.  I need some track to put the locos on so I can see the coupler trip pins.  I was originally going to just glue them onto the shelf I just made, but nah....

I'll make a seperate piece for the track so that the shelf itself might get to be used for other things in time.  So another piece of 6 mm ply was cut to the size of the top of the shelf - 20 cm x 42 cm.  Anyone know the number 42?

So I glued down a length of HO dual gauge track to cater for my HO and HOn3½ locos and wagons and then a piece of 9 mm track for the N scale locos and wagons.

And just so it looks better finished, I added some dirt and grass scatters.  I will ballast the track shortly as well and maybe some spots of static grass and such - what the hey :-)

So here it is in place actually being used.  My eyeballs can eyeball the coupler trip pins at a nice comfortable height.  The bench is stable and I made sure it is also wide enough that should a loco decide to go to sleep and fall off the track after being knocked by a clumsy hand, it will just lie down in the grass.

OK, now those trip pins on the couplers are now good to go :-)