Which does everyone prefer for railroad bed? Cork? Foam? Something else? THANKS!!!
I don’t use anything; track sits on the foam table top
Homabed for the mainline, cork for everything else.
Jim
I used Homasote on my first layout but man what a mess cutting it with a saber saw. My current layout uses a foam product (not sure of the brand) that was much easier to work with.
I have cork on top of 1/2" AC plywood…
Neal
My track is on cork or directly atop plywood or dimensional lumber. Track is mostly flex, held in place with track nails and ballasted, while the rest is Central Valley tie strips, secured with contact cement and rail added, also with contact cement.
I help a friend build a layout and he had foam roadbed (Woodland Scenics?) - awful stuff, in my opinion. The benchwork was partical board with a Melamine finish [+o(] - we covered that with 1" blue styrofoam. None of those materials hold nails, so we used T-pins to hold the track in place while we ballasted. I was surprised that the ballast alone seems to hold everything in place.
Wayne
I used Woodland Scenics foam roadbed on my main line and one or two layers of craft foam under my sidings and spurs depending on the desired elevation change.
Cascade Rail Supply
CORK! There is no substitute!
For HO, use HO or N cork, but use it.
I used standard HO cork on the mainline and N scale (thinner) in yards. If doing again, I would consider N on mainline and none in yards. I have not ballasted and added adjacent landscape slopes yet but on my small layout the track atop Ho scale cork on the mainlines is pretty high.
Other than appearance and ease of installation, there is the noise consideration, especially after ballasting on plywood, IIRC. I think part of the noise equation may include glue types, etc. There is an interesting related article in one of my Kalmbach booklets, somewhere.
I actually use both – Cork for turnouts and straight track, and WS foam trackbed for curved sections.
On my layout I used WS foam roadbed for most of the mainline and major branch lines. Service/yard/industry spurs are glued directly on the homasote or foam base. I used cork to fair down from the WS foam roadbed to the bare base (foam/homasote).
Homasote is my favorite roadbed but I used WS roadbed for the mainline because it is so easy/efficient to install large quantities (as compared to cork or homabed).
my first layout i used cork on plywood, this time im using cork on foam
STEVE
I have used foam from Day 1, so I cannot speak to cork. Easy to work with. Will adhere with adhesive caulking. Paint an earth tone, and then after the track is laid, ballast with Arizona Rock & Mineral ballast. Never had any regrets.
Use cork. Foam is not resistant enough to presure, also foam can not be tapered well, last oam can not be sanded to make sure you have a flat surface since at times there is a bump or flaw in the sub roadbed which will telescope to the roadbed, with cork you sand it out. Thought of one more, you can run transitions better with cork, more resistance so slight gaps don’t mater as much.
Sheldon,Thanks for posting that link…I’m in the process of building a new ISL and those homasote pieces will come in handy and save a lot of work.
A lesser known product is Flexxbed, which used to be called Vinylbed. I used it on our display layout and would use it again in a second. It never dries out, and was easy to use. I would seriously look at it as an option. I glued my track to it using Weldbond glue (which is pretty much the same as Tacky Glue). It’s been down for over ten years in just about every sort of temperature imaginable (while traveling) and it’s still in place just like new.
Jim
That looks interesting.
I have tried both cork, and WS foambed, and I prefer cork out of the two.