adantages of not using cork roadbed and more

[h44]

hi I'm a ho scaler and all my previous layouts i have used cork roadbed except in yards etc. i had always found the transistion from the main traclk to a lower siding to be a pain in the but, and when it came to doing an addition or reararranging the track, removing roadbed, replacing roadbed, to be time consuming and gets expensive. i have been lucky living in central pa to have a local hard ware surplus store that sells used door slabs. so my benchwork has been easy to put together using 16" doors mounted on wall brackets except one end is a circle of track which was a simple box construction, everything is covered with a layer of insulation foamboard, the foam is painted with a earthy tannish brown latex paint, once its dry track is mostly flex track and curve snap track(weathered)the track is test fitted etc and the track centerline is drawn out, squeeze a thick bead of white glue down the centerline, taking a 1" foam brush paint the glue on, layout the the track tack in place( i use brads) sprinkle on the ballast after about a day i go thru vaccum the acces(sucked up ballast is put in a conatiner for yard use), clean the rails and off to the next section, looks goodd runs great, about a month later i realized the yard area was not prctical for operstions some i'm going to do a little arranging, so with the track glued directly to the painted foam its a matter of taker a 2" wide putty knife and slide it under the track and lift up, track gets removed easily the area wher the track is removed gets sannded flat and repainted. so that whole process has been cheap and less time consuming, which is good seeing i get an average of 8 hrs a week in the train room and a tight budget this works great, have fun everyone time to do more housework,
mark in pennsylvania

 

[D&J RailRoad]

Makes sense to me. I will be using the caulk the roadbed to the plywood and the track to the roadbed method in my current layout. First priority is getting the roadbed installed perfectly so the verticle transitions and curve easements are smooth before laying down the cork. There will be about 400' or so of double track mainline and I still haven't started figuring out where the sidings will go. There will be pleanty of room for that, sorta like industry setting up near the rail service after the rail service is running.
The main thing though about the cork is having smooth mainline running so the trains glide along instead of looking like they're on some third world jungle line.