My Experience With Sheet Cork


P

PMW

Well-Known Member
So I'm building my first layout and unsurprisingly am making mistakes.

My mainline is on Midwest cork roadbed and I put all my yard tracks on sheet cork one can get from a Walmart, Michael's, etc... so the yard is lower lying than the main. I adhered it to the foam base with hot glue. Now I'm ballasting the yard tracks and have encountered an unforeseen issue. Some time after gluing the ballast the cork heaves up quite a bit. I'm guessing gasses are being trapped beneath the cork from the IPA or glue but I have no idea. Maybe this problem could have been avoided if I fully adhered the sheet cork by spreading caulk instead of ribbons of hot glue?

Anyway, after a few days the problem resolves (thankfully) and only a little touch up is needed. In hindsight I wish I had laid the yard directly on the foam, I've ballasted some tracks on foam and had no issues.

I post this for any other beginners who may benefit from it. Anyone with any knowledge of exactly what's happening or any tips would be great as I have more yard to scenic!
 
Seems to me hot glue would shrink after it cooled, and if it was stretched out to a foot or so of cork, once it cooled it would pull the cork tighter. So something's got to give, and the cork bubbles up off the surface a bit, or a lot. Becomes something like a washboard road.

This is made worse because cork has a rubbery, springy quality to it. Squeeze it in any way and it will rebound.

If you are gluing a large sheet down, I would approach it the same way you might if you were gluing down a sheet of Formica to a subsurface. So you MIGHT find contact cement (Weldwood sells one) would be a good choice. Contact cement, however, does not allow you to move things around once they make that first contact...but you could then use a hand roller to work any bubbles out to one edge and away.

Another option, assuming you have a bubble you just can't move around is to cut the bubble to release the air--if you use a roller that might be enough right there to flatten things out--and force some glue under there through a syringe. If you do that, though, make SURE you roll it down and hold it down flat right away, else the glue you just squeezed in might dry/cure in a humped up shape. If it does that, you've just made an air bubble into a solid object underneath the spot you want to flatten out.

Or do it the way Smudge does. :D

I haven't glued any sheet cork down anywhere before, but for single track cork roadbed I use wood glue myself too. White glue to fasten (N scale in my case) track where I want it, because white glue can be softened again to tweak track alignment if you need to by soaking it with a wet rag or even by spraying it with water and letting it sit for a while.
 
Last edited:
PMW said:
So I'm building my first layout and unsurprisingly am making mistakes.

My mainline is on Midwest cork roadbed and I put all my yard tracks on sheet cork one can get from a Walmart, Michael's, etc... so the yard is lower lying than the main. I adhered it to the foam base with hot glue. Now I'm ballasting the yard tracks and have encountered an unforeseen issue. Some time after gluing the ballast the cork heaves up quite a bit. I'm guessing gasses are being trapped beneath the cork from the IPA or glue but I have no idea. Maybe this problem could have been avoided if I fully adhered the sheet cork by spreading caulk instead of ribbons of hot glue?

Anyway, after a few days the problem resolves (thankfully) and only a little touch up is needed. In hindsight I wish I had laid the yard directly on the foam, I've ballasted some tracks on foam and had no issues.

I post this for any other beginners who may benefit from it. Anyone with any knowledge of exactly what's happening or any tips would be great as I have more yard to scenic!
Click to expand...
Another word of caution to anyone using sheet cork on foam for yards:

Don't paint the foam first! I re-laid my yard twice due to the glue having nothing to bite too. I had to take it all up and rough it up so glue would stick the cork down.

So in hindsight, I too will just lay track for yards and industries on unpainted foam from now on.
 
Excellent info guys! It's too late for my yard...I'm here now :eek:. I'll post pics in my build thread once I've done a good sized section and everything has settled down. I hope it saves someone else some time though!

Just to clarify, the "bubbling" or "heaving" occurred after applying IPA and diluted glue for ballasting. I only suspect ribbons of hot glue rather than fully adhering with caulk is contributing to the problem?
 
I am using a foam from my work site, used in the auto industry as a backing on formable parts for vehicles, heavy duty but thin. Instead of covering the whole yard I am just applying under tracks and since I nail my track down I am relying on that to keep it in place until ballast work gets done. Will post a pic of progress soon, but if you guys think this material will work for you maybe we can arrange a way to ship rolls to you. I am very pleased with the results so far…
 
The nice thing about using diluted PVA is that soaking with warm water, or as I found out, white vinegar makes it easy to remove.
 
PMW said:
Just to clarify, the "bubbling" or "heaving" occurred after applying IPA and diluted glue for ballasting. I only suspect ribbons of hot glue rather than fully adhering with caulk is contributing to the problem
Click to expand...
I've never heard of anyone having that problem before, perhaps where you have a ribbon of hot glue underneath it's not allowing the diluted PVA to soak into the cork.
 
Smudge617 said:
I've never heard of anyone having that problem before, perhaps where you have a ribbon of hot glue underneath it's not allowing the diluted PVA to soak into the cork.
Click to expand...
Not sure? If I build another layout I won't repeat this. If I use sheet cork at all I'll do a mock up first to see how it should be done :oops:
 
On my last N-scale layout, I painted my pink foam with a flat, ground-colored latex house paint (just so I didn't have to look at a pink landscape until I got around to doing scenery). Then after the paint dried, attached Midwest cork roadbed and thinner sheet cork with cheap, clear DAP acrylic caulk. Afterwards, adhered the track with a slightly better Loctite clear acrylic caulk (had a little bit better holding power than the DAP). Ballasted as normal. No problems for me.

Those were my results, others may vary.
 
Mixed Freight said:
On my last N-scale layout, I painted my pink foam with a flat, ground-colored latex house paint (just so I didn't have to look at a pink landscape until I got around to doing scenery). Then after the paint dried, attached Midwest cork roadbed and thinner sheet cork with cheap, clear DAP acrylic caulk. Afterwards, adhered the track with a slightly better Loctite clear acrylic caulk (had a little bit better holding power than the DAP). Ballasted as normal. No problems for me.

Those were my results, others may vary.
Click to expand...
That's what I was hoping for but just lacked the experience and foresight :(. Thank you for sharing your experience!
 
Well, I decided the result is not want I want and started ripping out track and sheet cork :eek:. This will take a long time given my current work schedule but you can follow my "progress" in my build thread (link below) but don't hold your breath for a post 😂
 
PMW said:
So I'm building my first layout and unsurprisingly am making mistakes.

My mainline is on Midwest cork roadbed and I put all my yard tracks on sheet cork one can get from a Walmart, Michael's, etc... so the yard is lower lying than the main. I adhered it to the foam base with hot glue. Now I'm ballasting the yard tracks and have encountered an unforeseen issue. Some time after gluing the ballast the cork heaves up quite a bit. I'm guessing gasses are being trapped beneath the cork from the IPA or glue but I have no idea. Maybe this problem could have been avoided if I fully adhered the sheet cork by spreading caulk instead of ribbons of hot glue?

Anyway, after a few days the problem resolves (thankfully) and only a little touch up is needed. In hindsight I wish I had laid the yard directly on the foam, I've ballasted some tracks on foam and had no issues.

I post this for any other beginners who may benefit from it. Anyone with any knowledge of exactly what's happening or any tips would be great as I have more yard to scenic!
Click to expand...
I've had the issue of buckling with the track attached to the foam with double sided carpet tape. I concluded that the foam itself shrank to some degree over time (years) as some plastic streets and sidewalks did the same thing. But, in your case, perhaps the cork you're using absorbed moisture from the adhesive that you're using for the ballast. It expands as it absorbs the moisture and lays down again as it dries. Probably need to weight the track till it dries completely.

1710279845566.png
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.



Back
Top