How to Make a Wall-Mounted Train Display Case from a Wooden Wine Box

This project was borne out of the necessity to 'do something' with some bits of old track and a wooden wine box. I'd held on to both of these for as long as the wife was willing to stand: they were lying around in the garage and she kept threatening to throw them out!

I was looking for a way to store rolling stock so that it was protected, out of the way, but easy to access when operations required.

The idea of a wall mounted display box appealed, so I set to it one Saturday morning.

The Wooden Wine Box

Somebody had given me some wine (3 bottles) that happened to come in a box with separators. I think it was because there was a red, white and rosé, or perhaps two reds and a white.

The important point about this is that there are two drilled slits in the wooden sides, which contain the separators.

This makes them easy to slip out and, say, stick some model railway tracks on them.

Having tried a number of configurations, using some old Hornby track that I bought at a model rail show -- and had clearly been part of a house clearance -- it quickly became clear that trying to hot-glue them to the wood wasn't a great idea.

By a similar token, trial and error led me to the following bits of advice...

Placing Rails

Although it's tempting, don't try to place the rail as close as possible to the back of the box, in the hope that you'll get twice as much track in. It's obvious when you think about it, but most rolling stock is wider than the OO standard sleeper width.

This overhang caused me to curse and then try to remove the tracks from the wood (I'd glued them down) because the coal trucks I'd chosen to display were too wide, and wouldn't sit on the rails properly.

I'd also chosen to hot glue the tracks down. Not a mistake I'll ever make again: it's impossible to rip up without damage.

On top of which, if you double the track, not only do the trains / trucks rub up against each other, there also isn't quite enough space to reliably remove stock from the back, so you end up removing the front items as well!

It turns out, however, that placing the rails in the middle, and making sure that there's space at either end to slide it into the box, makes for a neat plinth-like presentation.

Being removable, if you put buffers (or just a retaining screw) at each end, you can also slide them out (except the bottom one) to swap stock around.

Wall Mounted

The final step was to drill a couple of holes in the box: I didn't measure, which I regret for two reasons:

• It doesn't look symmetrical;
• I didn't leave enough space in the corners to drill through and mark the wall, and there wasn't enough space to use the electric screwdriver to mount the box.

The moral of the story is: if you're going to drill from the back, measure, and make sure there's space when you need to screw it to the wall to get the drill / screwdriver in the corner.

Still, I'm pleased with the result, and I'll add a photo of the installed case, complete with all my coal trucks in it as soon as it's up.

Meanwhile, I'm thinking about putting some low-voltage LED strip-lighting along the understanding of the shelves to light the wagons up, but before I do that I figure a lick of paint wouldn't go amiss.

But, it's a case of having enough time to 'get around to it'.

My next weekend project is to build a test track / workbench with space to mount my Hornby Elite so that there's also space for a computer to help with automated layout control and DCC programming. Fun times... 

Comments as always welcome, and if you're looking for somewhere to get wine boxes, I've linked to a Gumtree search in the Resources section below.

Resources:

• Wooden wine boxes on  Gumtree

How to Paint Lines on Model Tarmac Roads

Basic flat tarmac roads are easy to model for beginners: I just use cheap black fine grain sandpaper. It comes on a roll and is cheap and easy to cut to size.

Here's a tip, though, only mark and cut it from the back. The grainy side, after all, has been designed to smooth rough wood, and tends to do the same on pencil lead and even cutter blades (blunting them both in the process!)

Measuring Up

Depending on how prototypical you want to be, and how much space you have, there are two ways to go about making a tarmac road: measure and scale down, or place and guess. You may even start out by measuring, and then find that there just isn't the space to do what you wanted to do!

For example, for my street scene, I went out into the road to measure the width of the lines, as well as the width of the road, only to find that on a layout measuring 40cm in depth, there wasn't enough space. So, I placed two cars side by side, and that became the lane widths.

Painting Lines on Model Roads

The basic theory is easy enough:

1. Calculate the distance from the pavement;
2. Calculate the line width;
3. Mark up the area to be painted with decorators tape;
4. Paint.

The resulting road should look something like the picture on the right.

Marked Up Tarmac Road

The overlap isn't intended to be the centre line: the road isn't wide enough for that, and so won't be entirely prototypical. However, as mentioned above, due to space restrictions, 'good enough' will have to do! 

The next stage is to choose your paint colour. I use Humbrol 81: Pale Yellow. This looks correct for UK yellow lines.

For white lines (parking spaces, for example), I use a basic matt white paint.

It's important to dry brush the paint onto the sandpaper. Because of the fine grained nature, you will almost never be able to get the decorator's tape to form a perfect seal. If you try, by smoothing it down, you will also usually scrape your finger along the sandpaper at the same time, leaving an unsightly trace.

Failed Yellow Lines

The result of straight painting can be seen on the left.

Paint has bled over the edges, leaving unsightly splodges. So; unless the tape can provide a perfect seal, it is going to be impossible to get that "just painted" look.

Dry brushing the lines has two advantages: firstly, you don't get the bleeding underneath the tape, and secondly, it looks like a realistically aged line, rather than a fresh one.

The technique I use is to load up the brush, and then paint it onto the tape, as if using it as a mixing palette. Once there's no more paint on the brush, I then stipple the paint from the 'palette' onto the sandpaper.

Painted Yellow Lines!

(This doesn't do the brush any good, by the way, but for these tasks, I use cheap bulk-buy packs from a local DIY store.)

The mess that this makes can be seen on the right.

It's also quite wasteful in paint; I'm fairly sure there's a better way (I've toyed with the idea of using a sponge rather than a brush), so feel free to comment below if you have advice from your own painting experiments.

However, I'm quite impressed with the results that I get. Here's the finished product:

Finished Yellow Lines

I've zoomed the photo a bit to show the texture of the sandpaper, as well as the slight blotching of the lines that give them that lived-in look. Whether this would work as well in N or O gauge, I don't know, but for OO/HO it seems to be accurate.

Just for completeness, here's the road placed on the layout:

The image on the left shows the original road, with the one on the right showing the new extension, painted in the step-by-step process above. If things look a little dicey (one of the lamp-posts is a touch slanted) then that's because nothing is stuck down yet!