Cork road bed is typically sold in 5mm thickness for HO scale and 3mm thickness for N scale.
If my math is correct, that works out to be 17 1/8 inches in HO scale and approximately 19 inches in N scale. I don’t know how accurately that portrays the prototype, but I do know that I really dislike working with 5mm thick roadbed in HO scale, especially for ballasting purposes and transitioning into yards at grade level.
I would strongly prefer to use 3mm N scale cork roadbed in my HO scale modeling, prototypical or not.
Do any of you do that?
Cork sheet is typically sold in thicknesses of 1/4 inch (6 mm), 1/8 inch (3 mm), 1/16 inch (1.5 mm), and 1/32 inch (0.75 mm), making it ideal for transition purposes.
We use N scale road bed frequently for sidings, yards etc as well as cork sheets. Ballast has a varying height because of the road bed/ right of way variations. But, I think the HO cork is of average height for a heavy mainline. A lot of short lines don’t have much ballasting height vs surrounding ground at all–I can think of many areas with maybe 5" or less.
I have heard of folks using N scale cork on HO layouts for yards and sidings. Don’t remember what they recommended for filling the center, whether they cut strips from a sheet or what.
Prototype varies some as the terrain varies. The depth of the actual ballast on the sub roadbed probably doesn’t vary as much as what we see along the edges. If it is on a fill, ballast spills down the sides, on a level the track may not be far above ground level…Some probably depends on the type of soil and drainage in the area.
See no reason not to use it, expecially if you can come up with a fill between the two peices with sloped edges.
My thinking would be to buy large sheets from an on line cork supplier to substantially reduce the cost.
If you cut the double main line road bed from sheets, you kinda resolve the center fill issue. Just cut it wide enough to accomodate both tracks.
I really like the idea of the 3 mm N scale height of the road bed because it takes a lot less ballast to cover the sides of the road bed even if the sides are not sloping.
I have used the standard HO cork roadbed in my yard areas. The material is actually 3/16" high. I use the cord pads sold through Walthers as well. One thing I do is ‘sand’ the cork with a Surform tool or my detail sander to get rid of the rough ‘hard’ edge of the cork. My 4 track yard has large cinder ballast between the roadbed strips, and then standard Arizona Rock & Mineral ‘Yard Mix’ ballast on top(up to tie level). The result is a nice flat yard area. I have used the ‘N’ scale roadbed and just cut up additional material to fill in center area. I also use lots of 1/8" and 1/4" Masonite to build pads for my structures. I use my version of ‘Ground Goop’ (patching plaster/latex paint) to fill in the ground areas.
I use the 3mm Funky Foam from Hobby Lobby. Three years ago when I started using it I couldn’t find 5mm that is now available in sheets. Glad to know that others use 3mm cork without worrying about the looks. I always thought it looked fine and never really considered the savings on ballast until now. I cut it in a jig I made as detailed in the October 2013 MR magazine.
Sure. No problem. All of my track is on 1/8" Homabed or N cork . I use 1/8" balsa and sand it to wedge for transitions. For flex track, sometimes I don’t even do that, just ramp it up or down. Once you glue in the ballast it doesn’t matter.
I, too, use 1/8" Homabed on the main and tapered Homabed down to the Homasote subroadbed for spurs , yards, etc. My decision was primarily based on the fact that on a modestly sized layout with relatively dense track like mine, the lower profile roadbed makes the trackage and its surroundings look less crowded and more spacious.
By center fill, do you mean between tracks, or between the rails of one track?
With two tracks I thought each had it’s own road bed.
If you cut a curve out of a solid sheet does that not leave a lot of waste?
I kind of like the split cork road bed for all but yard track.
I’m not laying track anymore, nor did I use standard road bed when I did, but from what I’m reading here, if I understand correctly, using N scale for HO would leave a gap between each “side” of road bed? Several have made reference to “filling the gap” issue.
Wouldn’t laying a bead of latex caulk in the gap and smoothing it out take care of the gap? Any high spots could be cut down with a razor blade. It would be cheap, and most likely one’s track is getting latex caulked to the roadbed prior to ballasting anyway, right?
Just to clarify my intentions, if I were to use N scale cork as road bed on my HO scale layout, I would cut it from large cork sheets, and I would cut it to extend beyond the width of the track.
Some replies may have misunderstood and thought that I was contemplating the use of pre-cut N scale road bed which would present a problem since it would not be wide enough to span the width of HO scale track.
My mains and sub-mains are on traditional cork roadbed - about 3/16 inch thick. The yards and loco terminal rest on this cork sheeting - about half of the the cork roadbed height.
In some places I’ve added N scale cut cork roadbed to facilitate height changes. However, I used 4 individual strips rather than the 2 that one would use with N scale track.
Obviously this is costly, but I only needed about 5 feet of it to do what I needed to do.
True, but at least part of the idea of road bed is to raise the track, as on the prototype.
Once you start raising the track, you need to fashion a certain width to extend the road bed beyond the track and to avoid gaps that might make the track unstable.
I like the idea of using the thinner style 3mm (1/8", N-scale) cork as well on my HO layout, for several reasons.
One of those reasons being that I have a number of Fleischmann Profi-track turnouts that have a ‘ready-ballast’ attached to them. This makes them about 1/16" taller than most flex tracks. So how about my using this N-scale cork under most of my track, then a thinner piece of 1/16 inch under those turnouts?
How difficult is it to cut cork sheets into long thin strips?? (split strips under single rail).