I am ready to begin cutting the ribbon roadbed for my layout. I was going to cut it the width of the roadbed and build up with foam around the track as needed. After looking at a few pictures I found on the web, I noticed that others made their subroadbed wider.
Is there a reason why, Any suggestions??
Thanks
Chuck
In the past, I used to leave extra plywood to attach the screen or plaster shell to. If you are going to build up with foam around the subroadbed, the extra width may not be necessary. OTOH, if you are using thin foam (1/2" or less), you might want the extra plywood as a support.
my thoughts, your choices…let us know how it works out.
Fred W
You don’t say what the roadbed material is, but I assume it’ll be plywood of some sort. If it will be massively thick, you can make it quite narrow without worrying about the sponginess you will have if it is not supported a lot. I used 3" wide 1/2" plywood, supported every foot and a half or so on Tee-shaped risers. Given my druthers, next time I’ll go for 3-1/2"wide. The scenery will be self-supporting with a flexible connection (likely caulking) to the subroad bed, thus hiding the gap. So far it looks solid enough…
Good luck, let us know how it turns out. George
Hi Chuck,
I cut my plywood “ribbon” subgrade to be the width of my HomaBed roadbed plus a plaster shoulder that I add to represent the cross section of prototype Santa Fe roadbed in my modeling era. That comes out to about 3-1/8" wide, as best as I remember, with the shoulder sloping doen to the edge of the plywood. Where there are multiple tracks I make the subgrade correspondingly wider.
In general my scenery starts at the edge of the subgrade, without overlapping so the shoulders remain disticnt. If the track is on a fill, the scenery slopes down from the shoulder; if the track is in a cut, the scenery slopes up from the shoulder, forming a ditch at the shoulder’s outer edge.
So long,
Andy