The New Workshop - Part 1

Happy Thanksgiving!  I finally got some time to work on the new train workshop.  I'll post the drawing of the room later, but for now it is a 10' x 11' spare bedroom in the basement with a closet.  Much smaller than my custom built 12' x 12' shop, but it is more than enough room.

 My helper was cleaning the tool boxes while I moved the shipping cartons around to give us some working space.  I am going to use two old computer tables that my wife and I used for our old office.  We've sense bought two new desks for the office, so these old ones will make good shop desks.  The are steel reinforced and have thick and very deep tops.  In all the two desks are about 10' long.

There is a nice basement window here that suprisingly gets a lot of light.  I'll put the main workbench in front of this window.  The room is painted the same blue/gray as my last shop.  The reason being that this blue/gray works well with digital photography.  My main toolbox will sit on the window ledge giving me more table top.

 I've got boxes coming out of my ears!  With this smaller space I'm going to have to shrink my collection of equipment.  Might as well start now.  I put up a box with "sale items" on it and started removing duplicate items, things I've not used in years, broken stuff and obsolete items in odd scales.  The first things to go were the microwave that I used for molds (I'll do that upstairs now) and the old tube tv, which will be replaced with a Black Friday Door Buster model in 15" size.  This will open up a lot of space on the workbench.

I'm going to go modular with this shop.  I'm putting in lots of shelving over the desks and in the corner and will use the tried and true method of storing things in clear plastic shoeboxes.  The wife is going to pick me up some new ones as many of mine are in bad shape or broken from the move.  In the previous shop I had only kept supplies in the boxes, but now we'll have to use them for tools as well.

Going through the boxes is fun!  It is forcing me to really think about what I need to keep and what is just junk that I've felt I've needed to hold on to.  The sale box is already filling up.  Since my focus is going to be more on building structures and cars for future layouts and the Dixie Central, I'm putting more of the layout construction stuff in the back of the closet where it won't get in the way.

 I recently bought these three shelf, rolling cabinets.  None of them survived the move.  They are just too fragile.  All of them will be eliminated and replaced with plastic shoe boxes.

This weekend we'll put a shelving unit in the corner and build shelves in the closet to store boxes.  I want to be sure I can see EVERY clearly labeled box. 

Stay tuned as I get back into the swing of model trains!