Nice setup, love the cover! Also nice to hear that it stood up so well to the "drop test" you gave it! I'm getting ready to start my first layout in the near(ish) future. Because of my location (just north of Los Angeles, aka Shaky Town) I'm planning on using 1"x4" fir for the framing, with 1/2" plywood and either 1" foam or 1/2" Soundcheck fiber board on top. Construction will be L-girder semi-modular just in case it has to be moved. One thing I planned on from the start is that it will have to be usable from seated - I have a really bad back and can't run a layout standing up.
JohnnyB - Lowes in San Diego, on Friers road, has the blue foam in 2'x8'x1" sheets. They stock it normally.
I would go with the foam! I know that there are a lot of people that use soundboard and I used it on my O-scale Christmas layout. It did help tone down the sound but I’m not really happy with it. It’s a couple of years old now and it’s flaking apart. I’m also starting to question if it is unhealthy to use because I noticed a lot of fine fibrous dust each time I move it. The one thing I can say about it is it’s great for painting snow dust on it. I painted it green to try to seal it and since it was a Christmas scene I decided to add some snow. Now I have never been able to do snow before. I first painted the legs of the display pure white and when I was done I decided to clean the brush over the green grass since I was going to paint it white anyway. To my surprise it looked like it just it had a dusting of real snow. The soundboard kind of puffed up from the green paint and gave a texture just like grass and with the brush fairly dry of white paint it only got the top tops of the fibers. Before I set it up again next Christmas I’m going to scrap all the old thick paint off and repaint the whole layout with the snow effect. Even though the snow effect came out great, I don’t think Id use it for a N-scale layout.:tb-cool:
I put this cover together pretty fast. I was cutting the pieces within 2hrs from thinking I needed it and the next morning I started gluing it together before I even had my coffee. Waiting for the glue to dry was the longest. I had to enlist the help of my wife to install the two 6’ hinges. I did not count how many screws there are, but I was drilling holes and my wife was putting in the screws at the same time. It took some time. When I finally finished and sat down to relax, I started to think I may have gone overboard because it did defeat my purpose of keeping it light. Then I saw my grandson climb up on to the closed lid and I realized that I really did need it. He started jumping up and down on it and I was so glad that I made it strong enough to hold his weight. The layout is 8’ long and I actually do need two people to move it anyway because it’s bulky.
