Week #9 Lighting, fascia and valance

[chuck geiger]

I think we keep this bad boy going! - This is one of the most intresting of all the attributes of model railroading. I believe how you do this is contingent on the room and what you have to work with. Lee for example has to work around the attic for the WM and has done an awesome job. I like the "black" theater presentation of the layout. My new one is 57" high with 6" fascia panels and 6" valance panels in front of the lighting. It will be painted flat black, with the 8-10" Masonite backdrop panels painted a darker blue than before. The shadowbox style shows off just the layout and your eyes are drawn to the scene.

My former layout:


Joe Fugate's Siskyou Lines:


Modeling Eastern roads with the mountains, this is tougher to do with the shadowbox, you can't emulate the long vistas. This works great for desert or Western-type scenes, it keeps the simplicity amplified.

Lighting is hard for me, hardwiring fixtures freaks me out and is too much for N scale. I use connectable
section lights from Wal-Mart. They harness up and cost about 9 bucks. I will be painting the unseen area
around the fixtures white to direct and reflect the light towards the scene. They also need to be tight, next
to each other avoid shadows, gaps in the lighting that can be seen on the backdrop. Thanks Tony Koester
for teaching me that.

As always, go for it!

[soo]

Chuck,,great job!!!!!!!! What is the distance between valance and fascia?

  If I ever get to build a layout again,,I might go with black. I had just a fascia before,, and it was a earth color,, like a mix of brown and tan.



  The more i see the black,, the more it is growing on me..

 Keep up the great work.

 Adios Wyatt

[TiVoPrince]

Increasingly
I am drawn to the 'rope lights' you see every holiday season.  I built up a six foot section mockup of my as yet unstarted layout to see if I was on the right track.  Using a pair of white ropes having staggered connecting joints to minimize dark spots worked for the upper level.  On the lower level it is all staging and a permanent night scene so a dimmed blue rope light really works there.  Actually I covered some sections of the blue rope over the night scene to focus the available light better on vignettes.  As for painting the back of the fascia white to better transfer light I found applying aluminium foil to the backside of the valance and 'ceiling' was a better overall reflector...

[asciibaron]

the Clifton Forge Div of he C&O by Mike from CTC Parts is an excellent example of high level planning and museum like settings for the trains.

http://www.cliftonforgediv.com





-Steve

[DKS]

For the WR&N, both layout facia and lighting valance (not visible here) were foamcore. The layout facia was glued to the edge of the layout's foam insulation panels and covered with plastic woodgrain sheet; the lighting valance was black on the operator side, white on the layout side, and attached to the fluorescent lighting fixtures with Velcro so that they were easily removed for maintenance.

Lighting consisted of fluorescent tubes plus halogen floods plus day-night effects lights, which comprised all-blue Christmas tree lights (today I'd use rope lights) up with the layout lighting, plus two sets of tree lights along the horizon, in a channel between the layout and wall: an orange/red/purple string for sunset effect and a blue string for twilight effect.



What looks like pushpins along the top edge of the facia are in fact pushpins, which were used to operate the yard turnouts. The pushpins were soldered into telescoping brass tubing that ran from the layout edge to the turnouts. Also, the black stripe along the facia is a strip of Velcro on which I hung the throttles and electrical test equipment.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Black for me, but mine is full length fabric.
The top is just the painted edge of the layout.

[wm3798]

On the temporary loop section of the layout, I used sheet styrene gleened from signs I purloined from a trade show.  They are simply screwed to the plywood subroadbed.

On the more permanent section, the fascia is masonite paneling scraps leftover from re-doing my kitchen.


The fascias are painted my favorite color:  $5/gal screw up.

I have track lighting in the layout room, which is great for photography because I can easily adjust angle, intensity, key and wash lighting, and make final adjustments with the dimmers.  Although operators tend to complain about the heat that they generate.

I'm planning to add a valance for a series of flourescent tubes such as Chuck is using, but I don't have much to show for it yet.  Once in place, these can be used for operating sessions to cut down on the heat.

Lee

[Caleb Austin]

Tempered hardboard for me.

[railbuilderdave]

For the WR&N, both layout facia and lighting valance (not visible here) were foamcore. The layout facia was glued to the edge of the layout's foam insulation panels and covered with plastic woodgrain sheet; the lighting valance was black on the operator side, white on the layout side, and attached to the fluorescent lighting fixtures with Velcro so that they were easily removed for maintenance.

Lighting consisted of fluorescent tubes plus halogen floods plus day-night effects lights, which comprised all-blue Christmas tree lights (today I'd use rope lights) up with the layout lighting, plus two sets of tree lights along the horizon, in a channel between the layout and wall: an orange/red/purple string for sunset effect and a blue string for twilight effect.

...

...

The pushpins were soldered into telescoping brass tubing that ran from the layout edge to the turnouts. Also, the black stripe along the facia is a strip of Velcro on which I hung the throttles and electrical test equipment.

I wanted to know if you have any photos with the other lights for sunset and night?
Dave

[davefoxx]

I used 1/4" Masonite around the perimeter of my door layout for durability reasons.  I expected the layout to be portable (and it has been).  The fascia has held up well, considering the moves it has endured, including a trip down the highway in the back of a pickup truck with the tailgate down!



As you can see, I painted my fascia with an earthy color and was trying to capture the reddish clay color of central Virginia.  I prefer a color that doesn't draw the eye away from the actual show and think that using an earth tone blends the fascia into the scene.  I have to admit from seeing what you all have been doing with your layouts, that black fascia doesn't look bad at all when used to create the shadowbox effect. 

By the way, I also patch all of the screw holes and joints to try to make a seamless look to my fascia.  Once the major scenery work is complete (if I decide to finish this layout (hint, hint)), I'll put on the last coat of paint.  But I could use some sort of table skirt underneath, huh?



Dave

[chuck geiger]

Dave look at all that room for another layout?

[davefoxx]

Dave look at all that room for another layout?

Oh, I have seen the light, Chuck!  I visited Lee's (wm3798) Western Maryland layout (see above) last weekend, and I am reeeeeeeeeal tempted to start an around-the-walls layout.

Dave

[cv_acr]

At my model rwy club we use a dark charcoal colour for the valance and fascia. Ours is a multi-level layout using the shadow-box scene type of presentation. The layout is essentially a series of shadow-box scenes for each location connected by hidden track to go from one to the next. All of the hidden track in the background is somewhat complicated and confusing to put together, but is designed to keep the visible parts less confusing: when a train disappears, the next scene it appears is is always either beside or directly above/below where it disapeared. No confusing stuff like "my train disappeared so i have to go down two aisles to the other side of a penninsula to find where it comes back out" (which seems surprisingly common on track plans and layouts featured in the major magazines) There are some who might not agree with having trains hidden that much, but it lengthens the run of the layout - we estimate that when the whole thing is complete it could take up to or over an hour to run end to end including meets and switching. And that's for a mainline through train that might at the most swap some blocks at either Cartier, Sudbury or Romford. Some of the locals run across half the layout and back again, someone could spend half the session running one of those trains.

[shark_jj]

I am glad to see that the last 3 topics, others have kept this thread going.  There has been a lot of really great stuff shared.  For my fascia I am using tempered hardboard painted a dark green (PRR Brunswick?) .  It is actually a little darker than the photos show.  To keep the PRR theme alive I am using Keystone Station and Tower Signs with the trackplans for the area done up correspondingly.  Photos below.  The screw heads still have to be covered.  Once that is done, a coat of varnish will be applied over the paint.  I have the cloth for the bottom of the layout, matching dark green, and I have been looking with interest at the valances shown in this thread.

[DKS]

For the WR&N, both layout facia and lighting valance (not visible here) were foamcore. The layout facia was glued to the edge of the layout's foam insulation panels and covered with plastic woodgrain sheet; the lighting valance was black on the operator side, white on the layout side, and attached to the fluorescent lighting fixtures with Velcro so that they were easily removed for maintenance.

Lighting consisted of fluorescent tubes plus halogen floods plus day-night effects lights, which comprised all-blue Christmas tree lights (today I'd use rope lights) up with the layout lighting, plus two sets of tree lights along the horizon, in a channel between the layout and wall: an orange/red/purple string for sunset effect and a blue string for twilight effect.

...

...

The pushpins were soldered into telescoping brass tubing that ran from the layout edge to the turnouts. Also, the black stripe along the facia is a strip of Velcro on which I hung the throttles and electrical test equipment.

I wanted to know if you have any photos with the other lights for sunset and night?
Dave

If you can get your hands on a Great Model Railroads 2000 edition, there's a twilight shot in the article. I've been meaning to scan that image for folks without the mag.

EDIT: Here it is (photo by Lou Sassi, Copyright © 2000 Kalmbach Publishing, reproduced without permission).