Mocking up a stand for the Mt. Lowe layout

I've had an idea for a stand for the Mt. Lowe layout for a longtime and decided I should go ahead and mock it up before I got too deep into detailed scenery work.

Basically, it's just 3, 8" diameter by 15-1/2" tall cardboard concrete form tubes placed together in a closest packing arrangement.

They haven't been joined together yet as I'm still playing with ideas, but yes, once I've settled on a design they'll be attached together for stability. 

I chose the tube height for this test article based on the height of our family room coffee table. It's 16" tall with 15-1/2" tall legs and a 1/2" thick top. This size meant 3 leg tubes could easily be cut from a 4' long piece of concrete forming tube sold at a local home renovation store. 

I've wrapped a piece of woodgrain contact paper on the front tube in the photo to see how it would look. I might see if I can buy some contact paper with a slightly darker grain as the roll I have seems a bit too light. In the end I'm after a look that might suggest the whole setup was purchased from the 1976 Radio Shack catalogue :-) 

Nomadic Furniture 1 from 1973 | Nomadic Furniture 2 from 1974

Ok, the stand might not have been inspired by a 70s Radio Shack catalogue, but it was derived from a picture in the 1973 book, Nomadic Furniture 1. In Nomadic Furniture 2 the authors note work finished on volume 1 in August 1972 and it shows. Both volumes are clearly products of early 70s thinking. I didn't have a copy of volume 1 until 1980 or so, although I'd heard of its existence. I stumbled across volume 2 at The World's Biggest Bookstore in a bargain bin in the late 80s.

Table tube stand on page 48 of Nomadic Furniture 1

The idea is based on a table that uses 5 cardboard tubes for legs shown in the above photo. Frankly, it looks a bit unstable to me, but I haven't built one so I can't say for certain. I can say though my 3 tube, trefoil-like coffee table layout version is quite stable. 

I need to fiddle a bit with tube-to-layout-base attachments to see how this thing stands up to being knocked. Galen at one time suggested some sort of Lazy-Susan type connection so the layout could easily be turned for accessing different views. I like that idea. I just need to work out the details.