A lot of modelers have complained about the noise from their running trains. I don’t know if this has been mentioned before, but has anyone tried egg cartons. I remembered that back when I worked for an audio/video company, we rigged a sound and demo room with egg cartons glued to the walls. Not perfect, but it did help deaden the echoing effect in the room. Maybe glued or stapled underneath the plywood base might help? Don’t know for sure as I have never tried this on a layout, just throwing out a suggestion. Has anyone tried this before with success?
That might just work, and it would be cheap! Also, leftover underlay, particularly the dense yellow plastic stuff that goes under laminates would probably be very effective tacked up under a layout.
The cardboard (pressed paper) egg cartons work much better than the modern plastic ones. The paper helps absorb sound. Both tend to break up the sound with the rise and fall of the carton.
I’ve seen them used very effectively years ago.
What’s best is what’s called a flat, it’s a pasteboard 2 1/2 dozen holder that fits in a egg cases. They are square and have no lid. They use to use them on Hee-Haw on the radio room walls, hee haw… Fred
I think he was talking about the foam eggcrate material not paper egg cartons. The Audio grade stuff that looks like eggcrate is called Sonex I believe. My father had a recording studio and this was part of the sound deadening regiment. Placed on the bottom of the plywood between joists and beams would help with sound I have no doubt.
The problem I see is that usually one would run power and control wires in that same space and I do not believe either material is FIRE PROOF! One spark and you risk fire and or toxic fumes. I would be careful with the placement if you are going to use it!
I suddenly had a flashback to the 70’s TV Show, “Hee-Haw” and the radio station KORN. They used egg crates hanging on the wall of the ‘studio’ for ‘soundproofing’.
I used to work in TV and radio and we did actually use something similar – the mattress pads hospitals and nursing homes use for patients who are in bed for long periods of time. I don’t know what it’s called, but it has a distinct egg-crate look and is made of foam. The problem is that it’s blue, not like the Sonex stuff that is charcoal gray.
At least it is cheap and you can get it in huge rolls that are about 30 ft. long…
No, we didn’t use Sonex. I know what that is and have seen it used in musician’s rooms. No, we used plain old paper/pressboard egg cartons, that we all helped glue to the walls of the demo room. We had to wait about 3 months while the new building was being completed, and had no money in the budget for this room. It helped eliminate the echoing of sound, but not completely “soundproof”. PLEASE, don’t take my advice, and then have a fire start in your house or garage. I was only trying to help with an idea to try to lessen noice distrubance from the running of the trains.
I didn’t really think about the wiring running around underneath the layout and its potential hazards. Foam, probably not a good a choice. I think the paper/pressed cardboard type might not be too bad of a choice. BUT AGAIN, do not listen to my post or attempt this at home. God forbid anybody had a fire occur over this suggestion. If anything, just buy expensive and thick soundboard type of material and glue it up underneath the plywood top.
This is probably overkill for a layout room, but when we built a studio for our community access radio station back in the 70’s, we built the sound booth with a double stud wall–two walls of 2X4 studs about 1/2" apart. Two of the room’s walls were existing structure (concrete block) so we built a stud wall about 1" out from them. We stuffed the cavities between the studs (both sets of studs on the two double walls) with fibreglass insulation. We drywalled the outside of those two walls. For the inside of all four walls, we covered one side of pegboard sheets with burlap then nailed them up to the studs. The smell of fresh burlap was overpowering in the room for the first few weeks, but the acoustics were dead inside the room and I think you could have fired a gun in there and not be heard outside the room. The cables to the control console went through the inner wall, ran inside the wall for a couple of feet or so, then exited through the outer wall. Electrical outlets weren’t a problem as there were sufficient in the existing block wall and we just had to provide access holes for them. The ceiling was an existing suspended ceiling and we just insulated it with fiberglass.
An insulated double stud wall will certainly keep sound from escaping from the room, and insulation in the ceiling will keep it from going upstairs. But, as pointed out by others, you do need to be very careful of possible fire. Using materials like fibreglass would be safer than papier mache egg cartons, although those are an old standby for sound control. You should always check with your local building codes to make sure you’re not violating any of them or you may find that your insurance is void if you have a fire. This is especially true of electrical work. It was pointed out to me when I did my basement that if I did not have an electrical permit and inspection and a fire was traced to faulty wiring that I had done, my insurance company wouldn’t pay up.
Years ago when I was in the Alarm business, we built a monitoring room for our live audio monitoring equipment, and had matching carpeting layed on the walls up to the ceiling. It was really “dead” sound in that room. No echo effect what so ever. Not cheap, but effective!
Omar
You guys are missing the point. The sound is generated by the locos. Since your ear is closer to the loco, stuff glued under the layout isn’t going to help unless your whole table is vibrating. If it is correctly constructed this will not be the case. Gluing stuff to the layout or walls will make the room quieter, but not a noisy locomotive. There are other cures for that.
I worked for a bit as a design engineer at a heavy duty truck manufacturer. We had a “semi - anachoic” room. (I know, I probably butchered the spelling.) The foam wedges on the wall were to absorb transmitted sound - to keep it from echoing.
We also put special foam on the inside of the truck’s hood to cut down on transmitting sound in the first place. It was glued to the fiberglass on one side, and had a thin layer of lead on the other. The sound energy from the engine vibrated hte lead, but the springyness of the foam prevented the energy from getting to the hood itself.
I wouldn’t use lead anymore. There isn’t enough room in an engine to put this stuff in anyway. So…cut down on the transmission of vibrations. No wires, etc., rubbing on the shell. Foam or cork between the track and the plywood.
Finally - carpet the floor to stop reflections of the sound.
Egg crates, egg crate foam, Sonex, etc. are upper mid to high frequency absorbers. They are used to prevent unwanted reflections from hard surfaces. If you think of the train as being the magnet in a speaker, the table can become diaphragm or paper cone if energy is transmitted through rigid materials from the track to large sheets of plywood.
Normal scenery on top of the layout will absorb varying amounts of sound energy coming off plywood, layers of foam and plaster will soak up close to all of it. But the bottom of the layout is usually untreated. It will radiate the vibrations into the cavity under the benchwork without attenuation of any kind. You could treat the floor with carpet, but you’d still get some leakage around the edges of the table. Carpet, in fact any surfacer treatment will not absorb mid and lower frequency sound energy.
In order then, your options, from best to worst, for quiet operations, are:
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Quiet trains and track. Stop the problems before they start.
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Foam, cork, rubber or other deadening material for roadbed.
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Surface treating the underside of the layout.
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Surface treating the layout room’s walls, ceiling, and/or floor.
A final note on surface treatments like eggcrate foam…since it only absorbs part of the sound spectrum, and since anechoic (zero reverberation) chambers are uncomfortable for most people, total coverage with this type treatment usually yields unlivable results. Most studios and production facilities use surface treatment judiciously, along with proper dimensioning and construction of walls, diffusion, low frequency absorption and other techniques to achieve a reduction in reverberation, not its absence, and the main goal is to leave the room acoustically transparent across the spectrum, not solely at selected frequencies.
An excellent reference on low-cost sound manipulation techniques can be found here: