Have a Cigar: Genesis

Ordinarily I'm not at all fond of "novelty" layouts—you know, the ones built inside guitar cases, music boxes, and so forth. But when I saw an unfinished cigar box in Michael's during a quick stop for something (can't recall what it was, now), I immediately envisioned a T Gauge layout inside of it. I couldn't resist. I had to do this.

Although I was confident I could fit some track inside, I had no idea if anything would run on it—most mechanisms don't like anything smaller than 120mm, or 4.75 inches—and I determined the minimum radius required for a pair of loops would have to be on the order of ~2.5 inches! But again, the idea of a layout in the box was irresistible, so I decided to build the layout anyway, and bash my own custom power chassis to run on it if necessary.

Here's what I started with—an unfinished wooden box measuring 8.5 inches wide by 8 inches deep:



I decided to give the box some character. I distressed and stained the finish, then attached an old label for Chinese tea (I know, obvious joke):



Then I started on the track. For once, Lady Luck was smiling on me—one piece of flex was almost exactly the right length—I had about two inches left over. Here's the track about halfway through the bending process:



This is as far as the track would flex and hold its shape on its own. (Incidentally, the well-known "twist" exhibited by new flex track was gone by this time.) From here on out, it had to be "restrained" in order to hold the precise shape. To do this, I simply taped it to a piece of paper that had a 1:1 print of the track plan—such as it was—rendered using AnyRail:



It was slow going, quite tedious, and required considerable care and patience. But I did manage to succeed without ruining a length of flex, as I feared I might. When the shape was complete, I trimmed the track where the ends overlapped, and soldered the ends together with a standard Eishindo flex track joiner:



At this point in time, here's what things look like (you may notice that I've inverted the box, so that the lid is now the base; this will afford a better view of the contents):



The next installment will detail how I supported the track, created the scenery, and powered the train—assuming I can get something to run on it. I did do a very quick test, and it appears my CNJ F3 might run on it, but this was inconclusive; I need to run more comprehensive tests.

See you next time.