Aluminum Valance & Fascia on the Lakeside Lines

Tom Harris used aluminum sheeting for the valance and facia of his Lakeside Lines model railroad. When Tom was building this railroad about the time his house was being built and I watched work being done with that material in order to cover things on the house.

The material comes in 50 foot long sheets and would work well for running right around curves and thought it would be a good material for his valance and fascia. His facial material comes in 50 foot rolls of aluminum that are sold for doing aluminum siding jobs. He had this roll split into two pieces, it comes 24 inches wide so he cut one piece 8 inches wide, and one piece 16 inches wide. He used a 16-inch piece for the valence and the 8-inch piece for the fascia.

He put his fascia up with screws, first drilling a pilot hole and decorated the screw with a grommet instead of hiding it. His finished fascia mount in place looks very nice as contour and is ready for my scenery in front. It’s also an excellent material for easily mounting microswitches for control switch machines. The valence is made from the 16-inch wide part of my 50-foot roll with siding material. He hangs the valence using these little L hooks that I bought at a hardware store. Where he wants to hang the valence he just takes the L hooks and screws them into the ceiling.

To see the finished product watch the full video, and watch more from Allen Keller’s Great Model Railroads in the Model Railroad Academy archives.