I have to give some of the credit to my wife since she kinda came up with the idea. Our new house has a formal room we like to call the sitting room (Shut up Rooster). Since buying the house we could never really decide what we wanted to do with the room, everything we tried just did not look good and we didn’t want to spend too much money on it. One night we got on the subject of “what should we do with the sitting room”-shut up Rooster…
My wife out of the blue said why don’t we do an overhead train in the room…insert- me chocking on my wine. I have always half joked about doing one in our bedroom or my sons room. After pinching myself and realizing it was not a dream, we discussed how we would do it. We wanted it to be simple and rustic. We didn’t want it to go around the entire room, we felt it would be overkill and make the room too busy.
I always liked the idea of doing a trolley line or something on the ends of the Strassburg RR in Lancaster. The only issue was I needed a reverse unit and new they were not cheap. After searching ebay I found a unit (forget the name off hand) for under $45. I figured it was worth a shot. After adding diodes and testing it, I decided it would work, although it does give the train a low buzzing noise. Eventually I would like to get a Piko or LGB to replace it but for now it does what its suppose to do.
We went to Lowes and picked out some nice metal shelf brackets and pine boards that would be used as the base for the track. The boards were stained oak to go with the more common tree in our area. I built the shelves to go along two of the four walls. We found a nice country scene boarder as a background for the train. I had two old B&W train photos and Dietz NYC lantern to hang on the wall. Some shelves were added to hold one of my live steamers and old knickknacks. Its still a work in progress but so far Im happy with the way it looks.
I did add some nice trim along the front edge of the shelves to clean it up. The rings on the metal brackets will eventually get figures placed in a few of the rings, like a guy fishing etc…
Im still trying to find a better hanging system for the lantern, just havent found what Im looking for yet.