Raised Edge On The Table

Good morning, my layout is 42" off the floor and I to was worried about a derailed engine making to too the floor.

I went to Lowes and purchased the fake looking fiber foam base board material and trimmed my layout with this material.

This material comes in about 3 different wood tones and is located back with all the other base board molding.

If your table has a round corner this material will bend somewhat and go around a corner.

I used liquid nails and trim nails to hold the molding in place.

Something along the layout edge does more than prevent your rolling stock from hitting the floor.  It also makes it just a teeny bit harder for little hands to touch something you don't want touched.

I just went to Trainfest in Milwaukee and saw quite a variety of ideas.  I think the best is to have a small piece of edge woodwork with some clear, firm plastic raising about 6 inches above the woodwork line.

On my layout I have a raised lip/border of about 1" high x 1/2" wide around the table.  I then placed a piece of grey pipe insulation (Lowes/HD) over the lip.  I now have a padded lip to prevent engines from hitting the floor when the grandkids crank up the throttle and race around the curves (their own entry level engines).  At the same time, the padded lip prevents scratched chins for those on tiptoes peering over the lip to look at the trains.

Great idea

Mark,

  Can you take a few pictures and post if you get a chance?

Thanks,

  Tom

Hello Tom, attached are a few photos of the wood trim you asked for.

My edge is only about a 1" above the table surface.

My trains don't run super fast so I think this edge would stop an engine from coming off the layout. 

Mark,

 Very nice. Thanks for posting the pictures. The boards look much nicer than I thought you originally had described them.

 Nice layout, too. I may contact you off the list. 

Tom

Good morning one thing i forgot to mention is when i made my cuts into this material i used a brown sharpie and shaded in the face of the cut.

This material has a lite color to it so doing this makes the cut area not as noticeable.

Mark,

This is purely an opinion, so please don't be upset.  When I look at your pictures, I don't see that 1 inch lip stopping a J1 that's jumped the track and is starting to roll toward the edge.  Hope nothing like that ever happens.

Chuck

I have 3/4 plywood covered with carpet on the tinplate layout.  I used 1" corner molding to hold down the carpet and give the edge of the table a nice finished look.

I used the same molding on the scale layout too.