In July I started applying the fascia. I finished in late September.
The process of applying the fascia took less than two weeks, but the rest of the time was spent painting the schematic!
I started out painting the Yellow first with a small roller, then taped it off with 1/4" masking tape. The Blue came next followed by the Orange. Each color was followed by a stripe of tape. Once I had all this finished I sprayed a coat of Clear acrylic over the tape to help seal the edges so to prevent the black from bleeding under the masking tape. Once the coat of Black dried, I slowly peeled all the tape off.
"Why did I do this you ask"?
I visited a NKP layout years ago and he did the same thing, but he used only Yellow for his schematic. Since it was the first time seeing this layout, I had no trouble navigating the track plan when it was time to run trains. All I had to do was to look at the fascia and I knew where each of the towns were located, as well as which tracks the industries sat on.
I used Blue for The Rock mainlines, Yellow for the W&OV trackage and Orange for the ICG trackage.
I printed out little signs for each of the towns. Avery labels work ideal for this.
Since my industries are fairly well spread out and not that complicated, I may forgo the industry labels for now.
It does look kind of busy and a little distracting, so once people get use to the layout, I can always pullout the roller and black paint!
I also got started hanging the skirting. I just used Velcro to attach them to the back side of the fascia.
