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Benchwork Construction - Risers and Supports

I used a lot of different risers, cleats, brackets and other bits to support my track.  You can see photos of them in-use throughout the benchwork construction pages on this site.  Here are a few of items in detail.

Rather than use the traditional method of risers with 1x1 cleats used to support track, I decided to take an easier route and use pre-fabricated L-brackets.  I picked these up at Lowes.  So far I have found them to be easier to work with than 1x1 cleats and just as durable.  They don't give you the lateral support that cleats do, but on a single-track mainline and branchline, this has not been a problem.  The 3/4" screws that come with the brackets are a good size for attaching to the risers, but too deep for the 1/2" sub-roadbed.  I use 1/2" screws for that.

Much of the chaffee branch on my layout is hung from the wall via shelf brackets.  I picked these up at Lowes (Home Depot had nothing close to this). So far they have turned out to be durable and more than adequate to the task of supporting some of the higher sections of the chaffee branch.  If you need to support deeper sections of a layout, you can purchase the shelf brackets with the diagonal support.  I believe those will support hundreds of pounds of weight.

Here's the combination of risers, l-brackets and shelf supports as used to support one of the coal mines on the Chaffee branch. I used a scrap piece of 2x2 (ripped from a 2x4) screwed into the shelf bracket. Below, you can see a small photo of how that is assembled.  I used 1 1/4" drywall screws to put it all together.  The "T" portion at the top was pre-assembled.  The riser was not screwed to the 2x2 until after I had leveled the plywood sub-roadbed.  It would have been possible to simply screw the plywood directly to the shelf bracket.  However, that would have locked me into an exact track height and would provide no room for leveling the sub-roadbed in any of the dimensions (shelf brackets tend to lean "into" the wall, not good for track!)