Palmer Industrial Fascia

I mentioned at the end of my Foam on the Palmer Industrial Park post that I was planning on following the recommendation in Lance Mindheim's book "How To Build A Switching Layout" to use 1/4" MDF for fascia.  The bending experiment I showed at the end of that post was a success.  Here's a photo of that piece of MDF after I unclamped it and left it sitting on the bench for a couple weeks:

The bend holds even when unclamped

 You can see that the bend has relaxed a little bit, but not much.  Success!  I bought a sheet of 1/4" MDF to do the rest of the fascia.  I promptly broke two strips trying to put both bends in a single piece for the end of the peninsula.  Sanity prevailed while I still had enough left of the sheet.  I went back to my original method of doing just one bend at a time.  I used a trash can lid, sitting on a piece of 2" foam with a hole cut in it for the handle, so the lid would sit flat.  I filled the lid with water, and soaked an old towel in it.  Then I wrapped the towel around the section of an MDF strip that needed to be bent.  I propped the ends of the MDF up a bit to give it just a little bend, and left the towel wrapped area sitting on the trash can lid with the water deep enough to keep the towel soaking.

Heavily soaking at the beginning of a bend

The water needed to be refilled as it soaked in.  And pouring it over the top of the towel made sure the whole towel wrapped area stayed soaking.  Over the course of several hours, I propped up the ends higher and higher, wedging them in a little too to keep increasing the bend.  It's very important not to rush this process, or the MDF will break.  As the bend progressed the towel wrapped section sat further down in the water in the trash can lid, which made keeping it soaking easier.

The bend is progressing nicely

Once the MDF will bend to the desired radius without much force, it's time to go clamp it on the layout.  I did each bend in a separate piece.  Some planning as to where the joints in the MDF will be is necessary, so you can get the bend in about the right place with enough extra at each end so you can trim to fit.  It does take a little time to do, but it's kind of fun and I think the end result is worth it.


I fastened the MDF to the layout with yellow glue and brads.  At the joints between pieces of MDF I just made sure both ends were cut square, butted them up, and glued them like crazy.  After all the glue dried I went back and filled in the imperfections at the joints with wood filler, and sanded it flush.  It didn't take much.  The dark color of the fascia hides any remaining imperfections.  The joints between the MDF sections have a 1x4 behind them below the plywood surface, which helps keep them firmly aligned.  The top 2 1/4" is unattached though - all that's behind it is the 2" foam.  The rigidity of the MDF combined with it's solidly glued base seems to make the top end of the joints between strips plenty strong enough, even though they are just butted together and glued.

Fascia in place and painted

Above is a picture of the end of the Palmer Industrial Park peninsula with the fascia installed and painted gloss hunter green.  I painted the layout supports satin black too, which was a big improvement.  I used valspar latex enamel paint - the color, finish, and brand were selected by what was available at the local Lowes pre-mixed in a quart can.  The colors turned out pretty nicely.  The green is a pretty dark color, and it doesn't seem to be possible to get a picture of it that really shows it's color properly - it looks darker than the above picture in person.  I used forest green on the O scale layout (in the background), and in person that doesn't look as nice as the hunter green.

The paper track plan, cut back to not overhang the edges, did a good job of keeping the green fascia paint off the layout surface.  After the fascia paint was dry I pulled off the paper track plan for good.  The most recent thing I've done is finish going over the rows of indentations in the foam left by the pounce wheel track plan tracing so the track center lines are easily visible.  We lost power for four days in an early but nasty storm here.  It eventually occured to me that since the best way to go over the rows of indentations is to shine a flashlight along the layout surface, it was a task perfectly suited to a cold and dull evening with no power.

Fascia done, backdrop done, trackplan traced - time for track?

The current state of the layout is shown in the photo above.  It's now time to quit waffling on some final track decisions.  When I started this project I planned to hand lay code 40 turnouts and use ME code 40 flex track.  I eventually convinced myself that if I ever wanted to actually get the layout running I should use Atlas code 55.  I've purchased all the Atlas code 55 track and switches I need, but I must admit there has been a little nagging voice in the back of my head saying "it's still not too late to do code 40".  I also need to finalize a decision on how to control the turnouts (ground throw, just plain friction, tortoise, something more exotic), and practice soldering point jumpers to those tiny little points a bit more on my two sacrificial practice turnouts.

Up to now, all of those seemed like decisions I could string along until the time came.  The time has now come.