Next come rock outcroppings, staining/painting, and turf/ground cover.
The control panel is a re-work of my original panel from 10+ years ago. The original was done by sandwiching the layout printed on acid-free paper between 2 sheets of plexiglass. I then had to drill over (50) ¼"-inch holes in the 2 sheets of plexi using a glass cutting bit in a drill press. Took forever, and was very touchy.
This last time, I used the same box and much of the same wiring, but this time I printed the track plan out of RR-Track to a PDF file. I think imported this into a free Adobe Illustrator clone vector drawing program and placed the PDF file in the background and traced it as a vector file. I think thickened up the lines and colored them, and printed this out on a color piece of paper. I took this to Staples and had them laminate it. I then took a 1/8" piece of masonite board and cut to the size of the box and used Super 77 adhesive to adhere the laminated sheet to the masonite. Now I carefully drilled right through the paper and board for the switches. It took much less effort and time than the original. I drilled all the holes in this one in about 20 minutes instead of days!
This all being said, my next layout will probably be DCS with AIU's to control the switches and I probably won't have a control panel.
