That would take away the realism seems to me. 

Anyway of putting the car-cards UNDER the 3" bench work maybe with a slight slant. Name of location could remain on the facia.  

Marc Fournier, Quebec 

If you have a valance above the second deck, you could mount the car card boxes there.  You could even add a ceiling-mounted mini-valence that only exists to hold the boxes, and extend it down far enough that it's an easy reach for operators.  If those aren't options, you could try increasing the fascia height behind the boxes to protect the cards from getting bent by operators reaching past, or mounting the boxes horizontally, parallel with the bottom of the second deck benchwork.

I'm wondering if you made pockets that hang 1 inch below the bottom of the fascia, the cards would then be even with the top of the layout.

I would extend the fascia down in this one area to make it deep enough to hold the card boxes - problem solved.

Rick Fortin has some great tips on facsias on his site you should look at

http://www.layoutbuilders.com/?ce06fc00

You'll be interested in the first 2 tips

I hope this helps

Steve

Unfortunately, Google goofed up Rick's site when they made a change to their web pages, which makes it harder to navigate.

This is the correct link to Rick Fortin's tip on horizontal car card boxes for narrow fascia. Works great and has been copied by a few folks in the bay area.

Here's a photo from that page:

And another longer view showing the row of horizontal car card boxes for the yard tracks and industries in Redding. There's been a lot of structure and scenery construciton since then in this area, but this photo happens to be on-line.

Here's the link to Rick's full page of tips.

That's the kind of idea i am looking for.  Though the metal studs would be in the way of putting them on the bottom of the deck, I can see a way of having them above the metal stud benchwork perhaps in place of the foam board which is the subroadbed and base for scenery for the layout.  I could make the boxes out of .080 styrene cut from 4x8 sheets I have, though I have to figure out how to have a way to grab the cards from underneath, but it gives me something to work with! Thanks again!

Ken L.

Fascia  lowering  requires some thought as it may not  work ok with some.  Too low for the tall ones, too high for the short ones.   Under table seems to me to be the simplest to do.  Could be as simple as plexi with a stop at end to keep cards from falling out the back.

Marc Fournier, Quebec

As I explained before, because of the design of the benchwork i would not be able to have the boxes on the bottom so They will have to be above the benchwork frame, and below the scenery.  My concern is being able to grab the cards if the boxes were in this location.  If I made the boxes wider, I wonder  if one could easily grab them from the side.  I suppose I could make some cardboard mock ups and try it.  Perhaps that is what I will try to do.  I would like other's thoughts on this as I continue to experiment.  Thanks

Ken L.

the problem.  Make the slots deep enough to just fit the car card with the plastic tabs sticking out to provide a grab.