I am very new to this hobby and I have posted here before with excellent responses from this forum, so thank you in advance!!
I have made an error. I bought a predesigned track layout and plan from Atlas to be laid on cork/foam/plywood. I am building this for my 8 y/o and 4 y/o (and myself of course).
I assembled the track on the foam, traced with pencil and laid the cork roadbed down. I suppose I should have pinned the track down or something b/c the track pieces don’t fit on the roadbed. I wrongly assumed that there was enough extra space on the roadbed that I did not have to be exact.
I am thinking of dispensing with the foam, nail the track to the plywood, trace again and relay the cork.
Any thoughts. This hobby is alot harder than I thought.
I personally use cork roadbed on plywood, but others have had good results with foam.
For a tabletop layout the method I follow is to draw the plan on the plywood, layout plans are usually drawn as the center line. Then I lay the cork road bed halves to this line and then lay the track on top. The junction of the cork halves effectively transfers the line to the surface of the roadbed. This works well with flex track where you curve the track to match the road bed and thus can compensate for minor errors. With sectional track, as you have found, you have to be more exact.
Alternatively, with sectional track, you can do what you are proposing. Or you can draw the trackplan on the foam or plywood, lay your track down and verify that the track lines are in the center of your track. Then lay the roadbed followed by the track. With either method, you could use push pins to secure the roadbed at the sides, lay the track, make corrections, and then gently lifting the track a little run a bead of white glue under the edge.
Keep trying until you find a system that works. Well laid track is very important in this hobby, but once you get the knack of it you’ll love running the trains.
I’m not sure why you are thinking of getting rid of the foam. I ran into similar problems with my first 8x4 layout and relaid the trackbed (WS foam in my case, not cork) multiple times before I got it right. On the good side, because you are using sectional track, you can lay small increments at a time to make sure the track rests centered on the roadbed. I wish I had laid mine on foam first (rather than directly on the plywood) so that I could incorporate lower areas (streams, culverts, etc.) on the layout. This is pretty easy to do with foam as you can just chop out a section. If you plop it right onto the plywood, that will define the lowest area on your entire layout (no place for streams, etc.).
If you messed up the foam you can always cut a chunk out and glue another piece in place, roadbed and scenery materials cover the seams. Use the leftover pieces to build hills. Love the stuff though I am still early on in layout construction. Good Luck.
Another thing you might consider, if you have laready glued down the roadbed, and the track is close to fitting, is cutting down the track a little to make it work.