My layout scenery is 90% complete and I now want to add my fascia board trim. Do most people install the fascia flush with the scenery or a little above it, say 1/16" - 1/8".
Thank you,
Brian
Flush, makes it look finished but it is harder to do properly.
Flush is easy with Sculptamold.
The fascia will protect your scenery as well as adding that “finishing touch” for the layout asthetics. If you basically know the scenery contours , you can cut the fascia to it or close enough. many times the irregularities of the scenery may be much too “ragged” to have this show as a finish on the fascia cut. My club uses a “sub fascia” attached and as part of the benchwork itself. The fascia is only trim added before scenery.
1/4" MDF or masonite works well for us, it is primed and base painted after initial cut and dry fit.
Early construction pic, shows sub fascia and part of finished (green) MDF
Some areas have the fascia wrap and raise up into backdrop
On my present layout the tops of the facia boards are all level/straight with no elevations or dips for adjacent scenery. I would have liked to have done some of that, but it wasn’t right for my switching layout.
I highly recommend adding 1/4" to 1/2" of height above the layout’s base surface. (table top). It’s nice to have something on an aisle to catch a locomotive tipped over by derailment or errant long shirt sleeves, heading for the floor. If the facia is cut off exactly at the height of the table top, you have no such insurance.
In Ops based layouts it’s a mixed blessing. It can make things a teensy bit harder to reach in, but on the other hand it provides a sharp top edge that isn’t so comfy for visitors and operators to lean on! They get reminded by the discomfort-hopefully.
Something to consider anyway. I’m a wall-eyed klutz, so that extra 1/2" has saved my roster a few times already.
Jim
Jim,
I certainly agree on this. But I think we’re talking about two separate, but related issues here. One is whether or not the fascia is level with adjacent tracks. The other is whether or not to fill behind the fascia.
In fact, the first of Bob K’s pics above shows what I mean. There the fascia is higher than the adjacent tracks and is filled in behind. I have places like that, although no quite so dramatic a difference as in that pic. However, I also have places were the fascia itself is even with or lower than the adjacent tracks, but where I’ve built up a small intervening rise between the edge and the tracks. It isn’t that one or the other is superior, just that you need different options depending on what you’re trying to do along the tracks at each location.
In Bob K’s last pic, the fascia along some of the peninsula in the middle is far above the tracks, in fact looks like it could even be a backdrop. That can also work, but it looks like it would be too steep in the pic to bring the ground level up to the top of the fascia. I’ve actually done something like this as a view divider and intermediate backdrop – that can also catch cars – that I cut from hardboard and attached.
They’re a little hard to see here, but divide the smelter complex from the aisle in the background here.
Here you can see them behind the smelter on the left and the packing plant on the right.
[URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/96/fvtg.jpg/][IMG]http://imageshack.us/a/img96/7
The FASCIA is where the LION puts all of his WIRES. EASY to work with.
There are some standoffs, and the finished fascia will cover the wires, yet can be removed to service them.
Layouts have contours?
ROARING
I install the fascia first and build scenery over the top of it. The finished product looks seamless since I firmly glue the fascia to the benchwork edge and/or cover the joint with fiberglass mesh drywall tape which is plastered in place.
Here’s a scene before plastering started. The fiberglass tape has been glued to the fascia as well as the adjacent cardboard scenery supports. You could use other materials instead, but one key issue is that the joint with the fascia often cracks over time if the scenery base material isn’t secured to it.
Scenery has been completed here, with ground cover extending across the top of the fascia to hide the edge.