I want to know when you lay main line track with cork roadbed. Do you do the same when you come to a turnout and transition to yard track? I notice the yard track seems to be on the layout surface in pictures of layouts, and does not have a cork or whatever else people use as a roadbed.
The question is , is their a change in grade, after the turnout?downhill so to speak to the yard track?
If you use cork roadbed on your entire layout, how is the mainline differentiated from the rest of the track. I will be building on 3" foam, do I dig a ditch on the side of the mainline track?. Is this the appearance difference?
I use N gauge cork roadbed for my sidings… in prototype practice, sidings were slightly lower than the mainline. This prevented a set car from rolling through and fouling a switch. To further follow prototypical practice, the siding rail would be lighter than the mainline, say, in your case, code 70.
In yards I dont use any cork or foam roadbed under my yard tracks. Nor is there any down grade. What I do is use a piece of Woodland Scenics styrofoam that is the same thickness as my raodbed and build right ontop of that. The whole yard is covered in ballast and dirt and is fairly level so there is no need to have the coutours of the cork or foam. By the time you glue the track and ballast it there is no need for spikes or anything else to hold it together it will be very firm. I just wish I did this in my Intermodal depot it would have made “paving” it alot simpler.
Bill,
I sorta did the same thig as the other fellow, but I took my track right down the surface. In my case, i used foam as my working “earth surface” and the mainlines run on cork. On the incomign track to the yard area, it ramps down to “ground level”. and then goes in to the yard newwork. I found it an easy way to give it the ground level look and lower appearance.
I use 1/4" cork for my mainline, and 1/8" for sidings. I build a ramp down to the siding using layered masking tape, starting right at the switch frog. Works and looks great (but laying out all that masking tape is a little tedious).