Shelf mockup

My darling wife kindly pointed out that the turnout controls I installed earlier this month are ugly. Now, they should almost disappear once painted black, but in keeping with my learning about Art Nouveau, I also designed them to flow into a half-inch decorative shelf that will extend most of the length of the layout.

This shelf will be made of aluminum channel. This should provide a handy place to prop stiff operating paperwork, hang throttles and to lose uncoupling picks and pencils. Before committing to a particular construction method, I clamped on a test piece to see how it works.

From a utility perspective. It looks like it should work fine. Pieces of card stand up nicely in the channel, leaning just enough to keep from falling over. The channel is robust and provides a stiff lip for hanging all manner of clips. What’s more, pencils and skewers, once in the slot, are almost irretrievable. So, it’s full steam ahead with this addition.