I’ve been laying track recently and while doing that putting my Kadee magnets in position. I’m just using good old cork roadbed on top of the equally traditional homasote/plywood subroadbed. The magnets that go under the tracks on the HO cork, super easy. The one that are right on the Homasote are a little bit of a pain but whatever. A third category I hadn’t considered bit me though. There’s a few stretches of track that I’m using N scale cork for a shorter height. The Kadee magnets are thicker than the N scale cork.
I’m not entirely thrilled with the idea of just digging a little bit into the homasote. Accuracy of the cork-hole and the homasote-depression and all that. The easiest thing seems to be using an under the track magnet designed for N scale. Would this cause any trouble? Are the magnets that different, that the N scale one wouldn’t be strong enough for the mighty HO couplers? Heck, is it even thin enough!
I would dig into the homasote and not use the N scale magnets. I think they will not be wide enough to pull he coupler pins far enough apart to uncouple the cars. I’ts easy to cut into the homasote. I would take a dremel tool cut off wheel and cut 1/6" squares by passing the wheel laterally from the left to the right and then side to side into the roadbed where the magnet will go and then use a sharp wood chesel and remove the squares that you cut into the homasote. If you cut too deeply, some card stock can be used under the magnet to raise the magnet to the level of the cork road bed.
You might also want to invest in 1 N scale uncoupling magnet and see if it works for HO if you’re dead set against cutting into the homasote…chuck
I hadn’t even considered the width. At all! which now brings up the slightly more interesting “the magnet is way wider than the roadbed” issue. Fortunately there is (so far) only one such location. I may go out and purchase an N scale one just to see if it works and if it does, well, free weight. In the time since I last posted, I discovered the HO ones are a hair thicker than the cork, so I’m going to need to do a little excavating anyhow to get a smooth roadbed.
As far as the original issue, I’m now curious about something I saw where they used little tiny round magnets in an array under the track. I guess I’ll have a look for that now.
That’s the method I use. You can check it out by going to my website (in the signature) and clicking on the “Layout” link in the left frame. I find that it works quite well, and all you need to mount them is a 1/8"drill. I don’t use an “array” as such. Just two magnets, one inside each rail. You might have to fiddle a bit to get the right depth. I use code 100 rail, and I find that a depth of just below the level of the rail base is about right. On shorter rail, you might want to go a bit deeper. These are powerful magnets. Be careful handling them. They can shatter if allowed to come together really hard. And even at that distance, they’re strong enough to yank a coupler over pretty hard.