Tuesday, May 13, 2008

First table design

I'm looking for a place where I can see and enjoy my model trains but I don't want it to take up part of or a whole room. I want it to be a static display but also dynamic. It has to be technically challenging in lots of different ways. It should be fun and functional and also it should look good because my girlfriend is not into model trains so it may not be in her way ;-)

So I'm going to make a coffee table model railroad.

I tried this before but it was a shonky quick and dirty job so now we're going to prepare better starting with designing the track layout and now the table itself.

This is the first attempt in designing the table. It will also get a glass top. The cylinders will hold the rail coil on the outside and the inside will not be covered by glass, leaving an opening for i.e. a plant. It has yet to be decided what kind of "feet" the table will get...

The design tool used by the way, is Sketchup from Google.

4 comments:

kees said...

Why put feet under it? Just leave it sitting on the floor.

If you think it will be too low, just make the glass walls higher and it wil give you more 'mountainous' terrain to model.

Instead of plants coming out off the cylinders you could have volcanoes... This would make a dual purpose table: railroad for you, fondue set for Nicole.

Vincent said...

@ Kees: Because I don't like it sitting on the floor.

Luke H said...

Looks pretty cool, how are you going to make the holes in the glass top?

Vincent said...

With a glass cutter :-)