The cleaner the presentation of our layout, the more buy-in we get from family members….and ourselves. Shown above is a “current status” photo of the East Rail layout showing its floating bench work. There’s nothing that complicated going on. The bench work itself is sixteen inches wide and comprised of hollow core door slabs (The cost of which has skyrocketed of late. Ouch!) sitting on shelf brackets. I laminated one inch thick extruded foam on top of the doors for the scenery base. The fascia is quarter inch thick MDF ripped into 4 1/2″ strips.

I’ve never cared for the look of shelf bracket stanchions running down a wall. For a cleaner look, I cut the stanchions into, short, four inch long pieces (wear eye protection while cutting) and screwed them into the wall studs with 2 1/2″ drywall screws. From a normal viewing perspective the stanchions are essentially invisible. Overall the bracket assembly mount is solid. Model railroads are much lighter than books so there isn’t that much stress on the mounts. The brackets are twelve inches long.