I contacted Owens Corning to see who sold 2" thick uncoated pink foam in my area. Told them I wanted a bunch of it to insulate my train building and use some for my train layout explaining how people cut it and sculpt it for mountains.They shot me back an e-mail saying "We STRONGLY advise against useing our products for this train/hobby purpose! Our products are not intended to be cut, shaped,molded or sanded.They are ment to be encapsulated in a wall or ceiling ONLY.We strongly recommend you cease this use of our products!
Did anyone ever check to see if useing this stuff was a wise idea?
[:O] [xx(]
In response to Mark in Utah
You have several conditions working in your favor that prevent incorrect crossways leveling or superelevation on curving grades. You have an around-the-room layout which means your subroadbed for the entire grade is not from a single piece of plywood. Mine was a 4 ft x 6ft layout with 18in radius curves and 4% grades; the 1/2in ply subroadbed was cut from a single sheet of plywood.
In your case, the slight amount of necessary twist can be easily introduced (even inadvertantly) at the plywood joints. Even if the twist is not put in at the plywood joints (doesn’t take much with your larger radius curves), you can plane, sand, and form the foam to get it right. I was using a paper-topped fiberboard that could not be sanded without ruining the paper spiking surface. Nevertheless, if I took a level crossways to your track centerline along a single piece of plywood subroadbed on a curving grade, I’ll bet I could detect the effect I describe. It just might be minor enough in your case to not be detectable to the eye.
Plywood boatbuilding and boat architecture has always had to keep in mind that bending plywood in 2 dimensions is extremely difficult unless using very thin material. For this reason, good plywood boat design relies on conical or cylindrical shapes so that the plywood need only be bent in one dimension. By gluing up multipler layers of very thin plywood or veneers, the 2 dimensional bending restriction is overcome. But you are effectively cold-molding your own custom non-flat plywood sheets.
Ask me if I’m smart enough to learn any of this except through bitter experience!
regards
Fred Wright
jack of all trades - never mastering any because I gotta take the time to learn the hard way!
Fred,
One thing that probably helps to keep my track level is I’m using short pieces of 2X4’s as the risers under the plywood, all cut on a miter saw. I didn’t notice any additional effort to hold the track flat, but then I weighted the plywood down while the risers were glued in place. Nothing like brute force to make it all fit properly, right?
I also established the level in the room using a water level before I built the benchwork so that everything is as flat as possible. All of my benchwork is hung off the wall, with no legs to the floor. So far, so good.
Mark in Utah