The cork road bed I have form my local hobby shop is adhered together along the beveled edges. I was told to pull it apart and put it together along the straight edges. OK I can see why and get that.
But what is a good adhesive to keep the straight edges adhered together? I also need to glue the track to the cork, what is a good adhesive to do that with? Will liquid Testors work for both applications? I want to use a adhesive that will not dissolve the cork and need to adhere the Atlas snap track to the cork road bed.
I normally don’t bother trying to glue anything but the bottom to the subroadbed. Whether or not glue ends up on the vertical face of the cork doesn’t seem to change anything. I attach cork with white or yellow glue, although adhesive caulk also works.
I like DAP Alex Plus acrylic latex sealant, either clear or “crystal clear.” The latter is harder to find in my area, but I like it as it has more initial tack. Use of “sealant” as opposed to “adhesive” caulk makes it fairly simple to pry the track off for re-use with no damage, but it has more than enough strength to keep track in place. I use push pins to align track while the caulk dries.
Some people prefer to use colored caulk. I like clear since it looks less messy until I get the track painted and ballasted.
After the cork is glued down and the glue is dry, I use a utility knife to slice off the ragged edge that’s left when the two halves are split. If you leave the rough edge in place, it can show up after you ballast and look awful.
I doubt it would work well for either, assuming it would work at all.
Don´t bother to glue the straight side of the cork roadbed, just glue the cork strips to you sub-roadbed.
I cannot recommend the use of white glue, although it works. White glue hardens “rock.-hard”, counter-acting the sound deadening properties of the cork roadbed. Latex caulk stays elastic.
Liquid Testors works by “melting” or partially dissolving the plastic so the parts weld together when it evaporates. It is only suitable for polystyrene to polystyrene joints.
Personally, I use white or yellow glue to glue the cork to the subroadbed. But other products as noted above will also work. I use track nails to hold the flex track in place. But again there are other ways.
Part of the reason for the cork being cut in that manner is to allow you to lay it along a drawn centre-line. Glue one half section in place with the non-bevelled edge following the centre-line, then shorten the mating piece by about 6"-or-so before cementing it in place. The shortened section ensures that the joints between consecutive strips will be staggered, rather than all falling at the same place.
I glued my cork in place using yellow carpenter’s glue, and, where necessary, temporarily nailed it in place with 2" nails that I had on hand. The nail needs only to penetrate the underlying sub-roadbed enough to hold the cork from sliding or lifting. After the glue has set, remove the nails for re-use farther down the line. I don’t notice any excess noise caused by the hardened glue - after all, it doesn’t soak into the cork all that far, leaving plenty of thickness for noise absorption.
It’s usually advisable, once the glue has hardened, to sand away the ridge left where the sections were first broken apart, and also to remove any high spots which might affect tracklaying.
I never did glue my cork down when laying road bed and track; or, attempted to glue to each other. Instead I used small tacks with maybe 1/8th inch diameter heads to hold the cork in position. Many times I found the cork to have not been slit consistantly in the middle and the sides were unequal in width. I visually centered the pieces and nailed them down. Then laid track and made sure the track flowed through the curves, spiral easements and was as straight as an arrow in the straight-a-ways. Finally, the cork does get glued down when the ballast is placed with diluted white glue. It may be that gluing road bed down provides more sound deadining than nailing; but, I didn’t want to do this, as I figured there may be changes in where I wanted the track in the future. Gluing it down makes it permanent and pretty near imposible to pull up without ruining the road bead and/or the track.
As they say, “there are lots of ways to skin a cat” (cat refers to caterpiller heavy equipment - not a feline)…
The way that has worked for me extremely well is as follows:
Draw your center lines for the track. Install one side of the roadbed - either with 1/2 inch brads or cheap latex caulk. Come back and install the other side of the cork, keeping the end seams staggered from the end seams of the other side. With a block sander and medium grit paper, sand the surface of the cork. I used to skip this step, but later found that was a mistake.
Paint the roadbed (or not). I use a light grey latex paint, which makes ballast coverage easier as there is no propensity for “brown spots”. When dry, lay the track. I much prefer track nails - using a tack hammer and nail set. But, some folks prefer caulk. I can argue either side of this fence, but tend to use track nails in the end.
Two layouts in 10 years and here’s what I’ve learned.
White or carpenters glue will secure the roadbed but will dry very hard. This will cause the roadbed to transmit sound to your benchwork. Also, any glue that gishes out will be more difficult to clean than other adhesives.
Staple gun was very effective. Fast way to get a lot of roadbed down in short order. Ensure the staples counterset into the cork a mm or two so they do not interfere with the track.
Adhesive caulk (DAP) is effective but takes more time. I used pins to hold the cork in place until the caulk dried. Any dried caulk that gished out was easily cleaned with a utility knife. The end result is very effective at reducing sound transmitted to the benchwork.
The reason I need to glue the track to the bed is because of the type of layout I am building. It is an 4’ x 8’ island that will constantly be changed around. The main line oval is Bachmann EZ Track with a passing siding on one side. On the other side is the yard. It is in the yard I am using Atlas Snap Track. I have to be able to change the track around easily. adhering the track to the cork is important for this type of application.
I think latex caulk will work best. But now for an obvious question with applying it. If i use a full size tube and my caulk gun it will apply way too much at one time. Are there smaller tubes with smaller tips or would another way to apply it be to put some on in a disposable container and use a tooth pick, cotton swap, etc to apply in very small amounts to the railroad ties on the track? How do you apply it?
The caulk gun is only there to apply the caulk for further preparation. I use a scrap of cork, styrene sheet or other material to spread the caulk before adding track. If you leave enough caulk to squeeze up between the ties, it’s too much. There should only be a thin layer to stick to the bottoms of the ties.
You don’t glue or otherwise fasten the halves back together. What you do is draw in the centerline of where you wnat the track and roadbed to go, then you seperate the halves and lay one with the flat side up against the center line. You then lay the other half witht he flat side butting up agains the flat of the peice already laid. It’s best to offset the joints to keep the roadbed flowing better.
I used to nail it down, but it’s much quicker to use latex caulk. spread a thin bead to either sdie of the center line you’ve drawn, and by thing - you should eb able to easily see the drawn line through the caulk, it doesn’t take much at all to hold. Position one side, position the other side. I use pushpins to hold it down untilt he caulk dries.
But I am going to need to remove the cork roadbed while it is adhered to the track when I change the layout. I do not want to adhere it to whatever I used for sub board/bed. The sub bed/board will be 2" insulated foam board with the scenery mat on top of it. The track and cork roadbed needs to be able to just sit on top of the scenery mat without being adhered to it.
The other day I purchased some cork turnout pads for the Atlas snap switch that will be connected to the Bachmann EZ Track. This turnout is the entrance to the yard. Today while I was installing it I discovered 2 things: 1. I need to shim it. 2. I need to extend it’s length.
I shimmed it with a cut up card board box that my Helping Hands device came in. I extended it by cutting a piece off of the second turnout pad. I glued the card board and the extension piece together with Elmers Craft Glue. It is currently being “clamped” together with rubber bands and has my hobby tool box sitting on top of it.
If this works as well as I hope it does I will continue to use the Elmers glue to adhere other pieces of cork to each other and the card board to the cork.
But because the railroad ties are plastic and because of the porous nature of the cork I think i will need something better than Elmers glue to adhere the track to the cork bed. For that, based on what I’ve read here, I will use latex caulk.
Thank you all for the advice on this. I think I have enough to go on an try.
Randy is the man and I’d follow his advise to the end. But I offer a different piece of advice because you left out some facts from your first post. Since your base is particle board you have an opportunity to use nails that you wouldn’t have if it was foam. Second you stated later on that you might want to change your yard. And why not you have a big beautiful space in the middle of your oval to experiment with. So I would use nails and track spikes and no adhesive at all. Then it will be very easy to change, experiment with different designs etc. on a daily or weekly basis. I’d go the adhesive route if the yard was going to be more permanent.
But lets back up a step, you state in your blog that you are working on track to build up a yard ladder. So you might not want to use cork at all. Its the mainline that would have the higher elevation. On the prototype the yards would not be at the same level. You might want to put in a small section of cork and sand it off till it reaches a gentle slope down to your particle board. Then mount the track right on the base surface. This would be more prototypical. I have also seen people use n-scale cork to give a lower profile than the main. Still others put their yard on a full sheet of cork instead of individual ribbons of cork.
Do you subscribe to MRR? If you do the soon to arrive Feb edition will have an excellent how to from Jim H. on page 26. And in the Jan issue starting on page 40 my personal hero Pele has an article and pictures about laying track and roadbed.
To get at your first question if you feel you must use adhesive then follow Randy’s excellent advise. Just a word of caution be vary cautious about adhesive around turnouts. Its very easy to glue the points together.
As another excellent poster says on the forum, my thoughts your choices and there is more than one way to skin a cat
Let me see if I understand this. Is it your goal to have the cork adhered permanently to the track, so that when you remove the track/cork combination it comes up like the EZ track product does? If that’s the case, then I’m afraid that you’ll be the first individual to have done that.
I was advised to never fasten down or ballast a turnout.
I don’t know yet if I’m going to adhere the cork roadbed to the Atlas track, which will basically turn it into something similar to the Bachmann EZ Track.
OR
If I am going to taper down the elevation from the mainline into the yard by sanding the cork until it gradually steps down. If I do this it will be after the first turnout which is the yard entrance. This will start with the second turnout pad not being shimmed and sanded, tapering it down where the sidings and subsequent turnouts will be flat on the scenery mat with no cork under them.
I have also figured out a way to adhere the 2" foam board to the OSB deck and the various scenery mats I will be using to the foam board, velcro strips. Velcro will be used to attach the foam board to the OSB deck in 2’ x 4’ sections as the layout is modular and comes apart in four 2’ x 4’ sections. The rolls of scenery mat i will use for the various applications will attach to the foam board with velcro. The scenery mat will not be cut into sections as when it is not in use it will be rolled up and put away.
To hide the edges I am going to attach a wide enough board all the way around each section of the outside edge of the layout to where top edge is flush with the top of the thickest scenery mat.