I am getting ready to build a small layout, basically 9’ * 5’ with two extensions. I had planned on just laying cork for road bed on top of plywood and then I remembered homasote and while looking at homasote in this forum I remembered about foam board. Is there anything really wrong with just laying cork on plywood? What is the advantage of layering plywood, foam then cork?
Can anyone tell me the month/year of articles in MR that use foam board as a scenery base and/or track base.
I have always used cork on plywood. I find it easy to do and works well. My current layout (soon to be replaced) has used it for over 10 years without problem.
As far as I can tell, there is only one advantage to having a layer of foam sandwiched between your sub surface and the roadbed. It would be that you can shape the single layer (or two stacked if you want more depth) to make ditches, rivers, and underpasses. I feel that the cork on plain plywood will be quiet, but so would cork on plain foam if the foam is anchored to wooden joists with something like latex caulking to help absorb the vibrations of sound. Foam otherwise is quite noisy in my experience.
Frary’s book on scenery third edition is a really good reference on building scenery etc, and will answer many questions. Cork on plywood or OSB is plenty adequate and easy to do as the gentleman said. Then just use foam as scenery elements. Guys like to usse foam as a base because then ditches etc ccan be carve in along the tracks. Otherwise ou gotta use the cookie cutter method for plywood to raise your track.
I’m using WS foam roadbed on foam board for the reasons mentioned, you can cut in ditches and washes etc. The foam is tacked down to the plywood with liquid nails, the foam friendly version of liquid nails I might add.
I hate to get off topic and beat a dead horse on something that has been discussed ad nauseum on this forum, but…
If you are still in the planning stage, I highly recommend looking at an around-the-walls or walk-in type of arrangement instead of a 5x9. The first layout I built was a 5x9, and after trying to operate it for a couple of months, I promptly ripped it apart and started over with a donut-shaped layout where I could stand in the middle and run the trains around me. The new layout occupies the same amount of effective space (including aisleways around the edges of the 5x9), but everything is within easy reach since the sections are only 2’ wide. Half of the layout is on shelf brackets, and the other half has freestanding benchwork.
Check out this link for an idea for an alternative to the traditional 4x8. Maybe it will give you some ideas:
Dan, I agree heartily. I decided when planning my second (current) layout that being surrounded by the entire scenery and tracks would be a experience in immersion. It was also a most sensible use of the same space. The only drawback is that it requires a gate or duckunder…no big deal in my case; I am short and still young. I think this is the ideal for many of us. I don’t misunderstand and fail to appreciate the obvious sense and appeal of around the wall, very likely my next design, but for now this is it.
In this image, the central pit is 36" across and 92" long…room for two realistically, three in a controlled pinch.
Homasote® was still relatively new when I was just getting into the hobby back in the early-'60s but I never really had an opportunity to use it until I began my first post-military retirement layout in 1979. I had, by that time I suppose, become conditioned through ten plus years of reading that the proper technique for laying roadbed was a wafer of plywood-Homasote®-cork and that is what I have done on my HO Scale layouts and, subsequently, on my N Scale layouts in the then-to-now interval. I feel that this technique has worked well for me over the years. Homasote® was advocated for use as a sound deadener as well as a substance that would hold things such as track nails. Cork is a silencing material; plywood, on the other hand, is a sound amplifier. Homasote® was supposed to moderate this effect by adding an extra layer of sound insulation to the layout. I guess it has worked; the only time I ever layed track directly on plywood was on my first two HO Scale layouts in the early-60s. These were primordial at best. Having never seen a model railroad layout at that time I had nothing to gauge my efforts to; in retrospect, however, it was pretty doggone noisy.
As stated earlier, I am conditioned to this plywood-Homasote®-cork wafer and it has served me well an
