Dispatcher's Desk

It's been a temporary setup from the start.  A couple short metal filing cabinets and a scrap piece of plywood.  Add to that an old laptop and that was it - the dispatcher's office!  But a few op sessions quickly showed it was uncomfortable, limited in working space, and looked sloppy.  What to do?

The good news is that using the temporary setup showed what was needed for the functionality of the office.  It's a small space - a repurposed hallway that used to go to the kids bedrooms... the same ones that were removed for the layout.  I did not want to remove the hallway as at some point, this will have to be converted back to living space.  So the idea was to cut a single piece of 3/4" plywood into the proper shape, finish it, and set it on stringers attached to the walls.  The desk itself then would have plenty of legroom under.  Experience showed the desk needed a side-table to store the car-card/train packs.  

I elected to use birch veneer topped 3/4" plywood.  It made for a great look.  Finish was with a simple 1-step stain with varnish.  For durability, I added 2 more layers of varnish.  

The desk was cut extra deep.  I wanted to leave room to set the PC, keyboard, mouse adapters, speakers, etc, and still leave plenty of room for a train sheet, track warrants, etc.  The other parts here are the 2 stringers that will attach to the walls, and a shelf that will support two monitors.


Installed!


Add a real PC with some spare VGA outputs and it creates a pretty nice setup.  By the way, if you are looking for a basic PC - no frills - but ideal for a layout running JMRI and maybe a few other apps, check out Blair Technology Group.  They get off-lease equipment, refurbish them, and sell at a very fair price.  Nope, no affiliation or incentives to share this info.  Just a great experience with them.  

3 monitors?  Yep!  Figured out a way to use the ports on the PC to get 3 monitors to work.  This is super helpful when configuring and playing with LCC.  I can have PanelPro open with the panel, a few diagnostic and configuration windows open and running software to show my spreadsheet for tracking I/O.  Pretty nice... and all with old PC technology!

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