To Roadbed or To Not Roadbed


Ken, I did the same thing in my yard, also 3/4" pine. AC Moore also has rolls of cork. DJ.

P1040297.jpg
 
 
On the M&WV, for a really raggedy branch line, I used N scale cork undivided. It sits very low and is almost right to the end of the ties on HO track. If a few ties protrude out, that's all well and good, it's an old branch which doesn't see much maintenance.

I use gasket cork in yard and flat industrial areas and standard roadbed on mainline and well used branches that see a lot of maintenance. Any decent auto shop or hardware store has gasket cork in rolls. My only gripe about gasket cork is because it IS rolled, it likes to pop up. Get some weights, lay out the stuff somewhere and put the weight on it to flatten it out.

DJ, great scenery as usual mate. definitely realistic.
 
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Allow me to axe you all this, if I am be using insulatin' phoam, can I be making full turns using flex track and foam roadbed. I am going to have to make a few fairly tight curves and regular piece track isn't going to cut it. I also like the fact that flex track is all one piece so it should have better conductivity over all which leads me to axe about soldering points together and will this work fine or melt the underlay material. But back to the point, if I make a tighter then normal curve out of flex track what is the best way to attach it to the layout. The nails hold it in place ok, but I don't think it will hold up over time unless, once attached to the rest of the track it just holds it's shape by the sheer pressure of the track it's connected to. Does that make any sense? Sorry I'm a bit goofy today.
 
Eh, hem.... Allow me to rephrase, is it a bad idea or practice to use flex track for 180 deg turns and if it isn't a bad practice what is the best way to secure the curved flex track when using a combination of foam roadbed with pink or blue insulation sheeting under that i.e nails, glue, liquid nails.
 
This picture shows how our club constructs track. We use a plywood sub-roadbed, usually 3/4", then an overlay of 1/4" soft pine, which is there because it takes spikes well. Then we glue the ties to that--we use 100% handlaid track in all the visible areas. What you can see in the picture is a new spur that's about to be joined to an existing mainline, and because it's going to be running off across a weed patch, the ground level (wood putty) has been brought up to the tie level. For the mainline, we'd have a ballast slope down to the plywood level unless there was a reason not to.

If you want to see a picture of how the turnout turned out (ha ha) it's here:
http://tmrc.mit.edu/progress/reports/2010/03/IMG_3305.JPG

IMG_3284.JPG
 
Caulk or Liquid nails maybe? Nails will probably pull out. Flex track is perfect for 180 degree curves, it has fewer joints. I would never use foam for subroadbed, but that is just me. Foam is good for scenery, but IMO, too flexy for subroadbed unless it has wood under it, so why use the foam if you have to have the wood anyway to support it?

Everyone is different though and there are guys here who have probably had great success with other methods. I tend to be old school.
 
I use a latex adhesive caulk for securing most of my track to whatever roadbed. Rarely, I will use CA glue if I want to "nail" down a section, although I've successfully pulled up and reused track that I had CA'd down. (But caulk is much easier...)
 
Beachbum said:
I use a latex adhesive caulk for securing most of my track to whatever roadbed. Rarely, I will use CA glue if I want to "nail" down a section, although I've successfully pulled up and reused track that I had CA'd down. (But caulk is much easier...)
Click to expand...

Chalk it is then.
 
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