Top Drawers

Despite the fact that our layout is quite large, we have no fiddle yard in which to store our ever-growing amount of rolling stock.

Initially, we stored everything in custom-made boxes but these began to fill an increasing amount of shelf space and it took too long to unbox a rake of coaches or wagons and, then, put them away again at the end of a running session. This would also mean that we would end up with a mountain of empty boxes cluttering up the place!

So, while the locos are all, still, kept in individual boxes, the coaches and wagons are now stored in sets of drawers that we purchased from Lidl - yes, Lidl would you believe, for around £11.00 each.

Each set contains five drawers and we have eight sets of drawers for our coaches and the eight for the goods wagons. 

Each drawer has its own label, identifying what it contains, and we have colour-coded these labels, LMS maroon for the coaches and Southern Railway green for the goods wagons.

Some of the sets of drawers that contain the coaches

And two that contain wagons

Currently the coaches lay on their side on soft tissue, with each drawer able to hold four coaches in this way. 

However, the goods wagons are different in that they tend to roll about in the drawers, even on tissue. So, to prevent this, we decided to fit each drawer with customized foamboard dividers, as per the photographs below:

Two drawers of Hornby Seacow Hopper Wagons
with the ballast loads kept separate to one side.

Two drawers of various coal-filled mineral wagons.

A drawer of Yeoman hoppers and a drawer with empty mineral wagons

Finally, two drawers containing bogie bolsters with assorted loads.

All of this does make life so much easier because, when we wish to run a train of, say, mineral wagons, all we need to do is take out the relevant drawer and, then, it is simply a matter of removing the required number of wagons. 

Similarly, putting them away again at the end of the session is equally straightforward.

Nice!