I'm looking into hiding the underneath portion of the bench work . The club I used to belong to used a black fabric for their layout ( when having a showing or open house ) and it had it's good and bad points ......any other suggestions on ways to cover the front of the layout ? I'll be storing various bins underneath and want to hide them while still having access if need be .

T

Other than another colour of fabric?

I have seen hardboard panels cut, but without a track top and bottom, they tend to get banged up at the corners. I've also seen people put drawers and such neatly underneath. It's not so much a coverup as organizing to minimize clutter.

Andrew

Fabric is ok, especially if hung on curtain track ... but as you say does have some drawbacks.

I think the neatest solution is to fit sliding doors if the location is suitable. No fabric dust and fibres, no tripping hazards, and can be painted any colour you fancy

Much of my layout has cupboards and draws underneath, but purely because I was given a bunch of old kitchen units when I was building the layout, and used them as the foundation

Cheers,

Kev

I use those throw-away pinic table cloths you can get from the dollar store. If they get ratty looking after a few years you can just toss em' spend another dollar and you are back in business. I use push pins to pin them to the underside not the front of the trim/facia boards.

Alot of module clubs use cloth curtains hung using Velcro. Use a color that doesn't "clash" w/ your layout scenery or too distracting to your eyes. It may seem to be alot of trouble to make these but they are so simple to "use" for getting under the layout.

I went with the classic dark green. I hot glued clothes pins on the inside of the fascia to hang the cloth. My good wife hemmed the several feet of fabric for me.
Maggie, our sweet cat who lived to be 17, is shown is in this old pic peaking out. She was a good girl and never jumped on the layout.

Maggie looks a bit upset at being caught exiting her favourite hiding place

I like the glued cloths peg idea though, looks good!

Cheers,

Kev

I did something similar on my layout.[attachment=15851]

[attachment=15850]

I just stapled some cheap black curtains to the bench work.
[attachment=15849]

Then I cut some thin plywood to covered up the layout edge. [attachment=15848]

Absolutely love the kittie , Ralph ......looks very good e-paw and maybe I can control the black better than what it looked like at my old club . Right now I like the idea of some sort of curtain temporarily but with an eye on using thin plywood or maybe hardboard sliders down the road .

Thanks , guys .

T

I used cloth on a piece of copper tubing on a large curved part


stapled black sheet to frame work behind fascia. I got the sheet at Roses dept store, it was really really cheap



You can see some ugly in these pics.

I just tried mini blinds on a straight part before my open house. I got a lot of positive comments. I don't have any pics showing it but will try to get some soon.