General Discussion (Model Railroader)

Definitely a dark color. I was given a few sheets of 1/4 thick plastic sign board that I used for part of my fascia. As an experiment I painted this twelve foot section GLOSS black. It actually looks good, helps repel crud and childrens' fingerprints a bit better than the flat, and cleans up more easily. Of course now that I like the look, I need another 48 feet of the stuff to finish the experiment. No rush yet though, there are still years to go in building the rest of the layout.

Karl 

My facia and vallance are actually unpainted masonite(dark brown), but it is exagerated with the room lights off. I have seen layouts depicting the southwest with black facias and this is what I will eventually do. I do plan to lower the top/vallance so it is less likely you will see the lights when standing in front of the layout.

I agree with most all comments thus far...

For the true "museum-shadowbox" look, most definitely go with the flat black!

On the other hand, I prefer an "almost" to that contrast and went with a darker olive drab "Cambridge Green" from the Dutch Boy chips, for both my fascia and the valance.

But in all honesty, the big thing with what ever color chosen, at least in my mind, is that it is a FLAT finish. A flat finish will not pull attention away from your pike with its WOW of sight!

I also strongly believe that this should be the case with a backdrop. Yes, I have seen some REALLY nicely painted backdrops with both landscape and detailed scenes.....But I still feel that a flat, less detailed backdrop does not distract from the diorama. As should a flat, neutral color on fascia and valance.

What also would be interesting is the cost per foot for the various methods & materials, especially skirting materials. (I have a hundred feet of skirting to do)

My layout is all foam, the terrain shapes are mostly finished, track laying, painting, ballasting and testing has been done. At layout's edge, I added a vertical layer of  2" foam around the layout, (covering the benchwork), so I would have a more finshed "facia" (temporarilly) while final scenery was waiting to be done.

The foam has been blended, smoothed and painted, to look like an applied facia and ALL unfinished foam everywhere is painted in appropriate colors for the area, (A layout is a long term project and I got tired of looking all that pink and blue and it really gives a quick & cheap immediate improvement).

I've tried both hunter green and flat black for the facia surface. I"m also trying a couple of areas of facia with the terrain color(s). I am still undecided.

I use landscaping fabric - not the plastic stuff, the woven stuff.  It's a nice charcoal gray, and it's inexpensive.   The only down side is I've only found it in 36" widths.   I glued wooden clothespins to the back of the fascia to hold the landscape fabric in place.

Nick

Chuck Geiger wrote:

Spidge - your layout looks awesome, need more pics or do you have a website?

Thanks Chuck, I also look forward to photos of your layout. If you look in my signature the is a button WWW that will link to my photobucket pages. There are many almost duplicate photos and a few recent additions. I added a siding and may change the small town(Victorcille) to support more volume. I also built a small engine service bay and posted photos of it. I just need to install some vents.

fifedog wrote:

Try this: Get three 4' strips of scrap fascia. Paint each strip a separate color. Temporarily "tack" a different fascia up and leave it up for a couple days.  The one that looks best to you, go with. BTW, I went with left-over sheets of white ice paneling...but then again, I model snow...

Interesting. What kind of white ice paneling? 

I'm using a high-gloss tan for my fascias. Lighting valence for the upper deck will probably be gloss black.

I use the gloss because it's easy to clean up.

I use the tan because it's close to the dirt color around most of my locale, and because it tends to diminish the appearance of smudges, dirt, etc.

(Sorry, no picture yet)

I like the museum shadow-box look, but I think it only works if the lighting is set up for it...especially with contained lights in a valence.  I don't have a valence.  In regular overhead basement lighting, I think heavy black quickly overwhelms the scenery, especially if the fascia is deep and the layout is relatively small.

I'm going with an earth tone light brown.

On the second ,level, for a short 2 inch fascia that will line that approach, I'm going with an yellow-ish off white, the overall wall color of my basement.  First, the area won't be "handled" by strangers as much as the base level, and second, I think it will make the short fascia complementary and blend with the overall wall color, thus creating ever more a sense of "separation" between the levels - that they're truly independent scenes.

I went to Lowes one day to pick a color for the fasica and ran across a color called "Aged Pine" from Valspar.  I went with an eggshell finish rather than flat. The color has worked out well.  Jim