Thanks everyone for sharing, and a special thanks to those of you who might have just joined us here on Switcher Saturday! We do this every week, so stop back with pictures, videos, stories, whatever you want about switchers, shifters, etc....
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MNCW/Tom,
When Borders Books was closing here in Maryland (Fall of 2011) I purchased one of their heavy-duty tables with heavy-duty casters (I think the table weighs close to 100lbs total) and I created my "tabletop" layout using that table. The "interior" size is 30"x60" and the height is around standard table height.
I laid down the track (0-27 tubular) with one set of manual switches and I added a bump-n-go trolley in the middle in a U shaped line. I also threw down a couple straights on the left to keep extra rolling stock handy, though a MPC era switcher sits on it nowadays. Here is the layout, though I may have done a little hacksaw work to cut things down a little bit, so this picture does not have the right dimensions, but it's close. My "RailModeller Express" skills are lousy.
The table is powered with a CW-80 which sits on the deck (lower left hand corner of the layout, green square), a "helper" vintage Lionel HO DC transformer (for some lights) is hiding underneath the layout, and another vintage Lionel HO DC transformer is hiding in the bottom right hand side of the layout (green triangle) which is used for the trolley.
There are 4 surface mount switches installed on the fascia which do things like lower/raise the level crossing, turn on/off lights, have the guy come out of the shanty, etc.. I also have a doorbell button installed on the fascia which purposefully does absolutely NOTHING, I added it as a joke & I told the kids it does something, but they still can't figure out what it does, because it does nothing.
Here's some additional pictures for reference, and a few videos from a few years back. The kids loved it at first but my older daughter isn't interested any more and my younger daughter has her own little layout, so they pretty much ignore it these days. I find myself typically not using it very often because I'm usually using my "workbench loop". Things I like about my workbench look include the height, the proximity to my storage shelf, and that it's in a storage/workroom in the basement instead of out in the main section where the "tabletop" layout is, so I get a little privacy and "quiet" time.
