For more than two years my daughter and I have been working on Woodland Scenics’ Grand Valley layout. I had a bunch of Bachmann EZ track so I tried to jerry-rig it to fit the layout. After it was glued down I discovered that trains would not run well due to gaps in the tracks. Two weeks ago I torn it all up and installed the Atlas track made for the layout. However it still isn’t smooth enough for trains to run well.
I have no model train skills and no hobby skills in general, but I am good at reading instructions. In addition my daughter and I have enjoyed working on and off on this project. but if I can’t get trains to run well on it I pretty much am going to have just a diorama.
I don’t know if there’s been this type of post before, but I am looking for someone to pay a reasonable fee, to make this thing work.
Don’t give up David. It takes patience and not a little skill to lay track well. However, the most important part of the job is to make sure that the subroadbed/roadbed base is as smooth and kink free as possible. Track laid on a bumpy roadbed surface will usually be just as bumpy as the roadbed. Having seen some of the Woodland Scenics subroadbed building materials, I can see that some these materials could create vertical kinks at the point where the incline/decline meets a level surface. Such kinks could be magnified when a track joint occurs over one of these transition points. I would suggest that after all of the WS foam grade risers are correctly positioned and glued down to the base that you use the WS Foam Putty product to fill the convex transition areas slightly. Then use a sanding block to smooth and flatten the top of the entire length of subroadbed before continuing. A flexible steel rule laid flat can be used to verify how smooth these transitions are.
If you are using the WS Foam Roadbed, there isn’t much you can do to make this product smoother other than making sure there is no glue/caulking build-up (or other bumps) underneath this roadbed material. Any glue/caulking should be smoothed using a putty knife before pressing down the foam roadbed.
When laying track, try to stagger the track joints so that a full track piece spans these grade transition points. You don’t want track joints atop a grade transition point. This may require cutting one or two track pieces shorter to move the track joints away from the transition point. If you see that a piece of track bridges over a low spot, don’t press it down into the low spot. Add a little more caulking to the low spot (just enough to touch the bottom of the ties when you lay the length of track back down) and place the track piece over the caulking without pressing down into the low spot. Once the extra caulking hardens, it
Thank you for all the time you took to respond to my post. I haven’t given up, in fact I was out there right before I read your post. I will try to take my time and review my work with your tips.
You can cover a lot of sins by simply using PL300 tan-coloured adhesive under 5/8" to 3/4" decent grade plywood strips that serve as roadbed. Mark out proper radius curves in strips of the right width, say 1.5", use a jig saw to cut them carefully, and then glue them in place with the stiff PL300. Try not to press them down hard and flat, but do try to make them even across their tops. Maybe some thin cedare shim tips for support driven under them where what you have already is really bumpy.
As stated just above, your roadbed, just like on the real railroads, must be pretty darn even and smooth across the joints. Use a belt sander, orbital sander, surform file, or a disk sander (carefully!) to get the joints smooth or you’ll end up with hitches as the rails ride over them.
Take your time to make the joints properly between lengths of the sections of track. Go back, after each successive joint, and look at the previous two to ensure you haven’t sprung one side. Using this repetitive step, your joints should all be good, with the very last one a bit tricky if you are closing a loop.
Your track segments should not be kinked at the joins, not from side-to-side to change radius or tangent angles, and definitely not up and down…you’ll have a horrible track system. Once you take the time to place a good roadbed first, the tracks will just lay on top of that and go together really well. The trains will run better.
There is a lot more to this, though. If your locomotive is jerky and works intermittently, it probably means all the handling, the taking up and placing again, has left the rails dirty. You have poor contact between the metal tires and the metal rails. It has to be consistently good.