Laying Cork Roadbed


2) I have found thus far that the split helps with locating over my paper drawing, then extracting the paper drawing in order to glue it down.
Here is the method I to draw the centerline for track laying. I thought I was being completely original with this method, but I later discovered that others had used it long before me! I call it the Sharpie Method.

What I did for my layout was to use track planning software (XtrackCAD) to print my track plan full size. This may not be practical for a very large layout, but it worked fine for my small one and required 20 sheets of 8.5 x 11 printer paper. First I taped the sheets together:
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The printout includes the track centerline, rather faint in this photo but easy to see on the actual printout:
printout_close2.jpg


With the printout laid on top of my layout base (blue foam), I used a Sharpie marker to mark dots every few inches on the centerline and at other important locations:
marking_dots1.jpg


The fluid from the Sharpie easily bled through the paper to make dots on the sub-roadbed. Then using a straightedge and a flexible ruler, I simply connected the dots:
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With the dots connected, I had the track centerline for the entire layout on my sub-roadbed. From there, I started gluing down cork and laying track.

- Jeff
 
Grades in the Cork

I started off this subject thread with concerns about smoothing out the height differences between my 2 different cork roadbeds and the plywood deck. I finally bit the bullet and decided on the sanding route.

First i tried the 3 older surform rasp I already had. I was actually surprised that they didn't gouge the surface of the cork. In fact I found they were less aggressive than I had hoped for.

I then tried some 100 sandpaper on a palm sander, and this went OK, but still left me with some concerns about the long even length of the grade.

I had a sanding board and attached some grade 80 paper to that. Wow, it went pretty quick and gave me a nice log even grade. Yes it produced a lot of fine grain mess, but at least it did not get blown all over the room, and could be picked up with my hand-held vac.


Two Yard Ladder Grades

A sample of 2 of the yard ladder grades I wanted to get right,....going from full height cork mainlines 3/16" at back of photos, down to half that height in the yards,..
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I wanted to make sure that none of the turnouts were 'bent over a perturbation of cork',....okay if unlevel in grading, just not deformed.

BTW: That is sheet cork (roll purchased at Hobby lobby) in the yard area. The mainlines themselves were std two part HO cork. The ramps and a number of other areas were done with some wider O gauge cork I happen to have..
 
I had a sanding board and attached some grade 80 paper to that. Wow, it went pretty quick and gave me a nice log even grade. Yes it produced a lot of fine grain mess, but at least it did not get blown all over the room, and could be picked up with my hand-held vac.
I have to revise this statement. I will NEVER sand down cork in my train room again,..if at all possible. It produces a very fine grain mess that readily spreads throughout the room, and even becomes somewhat electrostatic sticking to vertical wall surfaces. The granular mess even 'penetrated' thru my Ryobi hand held vac to redistribute itself on adjacent areas.

Look at this mess when I took the sanding outdoors to my work bench in the car port

Sanding Cork Grades

I ended up sanding the cork roadbed on a number of my grades. Several I did inside the train room, and several I did on the outdoors bench. I would STRONGLY recommend NOT doing this sanding indoors,...too much fine dust.
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I wish I had read a few of the good ideas on this subject thread first,..
https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/17518
 
The plastic and wood 'door shims' from the big box stores were too great of a grade.

I tried several power sanding methods, and was less satisfied with this 'control' verses the hand sanding blocks. Surprisingly I found the had 'sanding board' with 50-80 grit paper was more effective than those rasp.
 
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