If you’ve been following my layout build follies, you know I’ve had a few problems this year with a roundhouse reverting suddenly to kit form, plaster scenery work failures, and other smaller “learning moments” as I’ve been going.
Another one has popped up today!
The past few months I’ve spent many hours ballasting Casper Yard. I’m probably over 3/4 of the way done and it’s all gone pretty well - until today.
See the following photo. A bit earlier today I ballasted a turnout (the one in the upper left with the screwdriver next to it) that leads to Natrona Lunber to the left and the Standard Oil Company refinery tank car loading racks straight ahead. It’s all the same process I used to good effect in the rest of the yard, so I had no reason to expect a problem. The turnout is ballasted, wetted with alcohol and the ballast glued with diluted white glue.
I’m undergoing day surgery tomorrow morning (nothing major wrong), so I’m a bit restless this evening. I wandered back down to the train room, thinking I might do a bit more ballasting, or maybe clean up the room a bit (hard to believe that one, isn’t it?), and I’m sure glad I did!
When I walked over to check out how that ballasted turnout was looking, I found this mess:
Holy cow! The yellow glue holding the cork down let loose and the cork wrinkled up underneath the turnout, bowing the turnout upwards in the process! Yikes!!
This has not happened anywhere else in the yard. As you can see, the ballasted turnout is near the edge of the cork right here. While track is caulked to the cork, turnouts are left floating. And this one sure floated!
Mark, this gives me the willies. I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this. I haven’t even started thinking about ballast yet, but I would never have expected something like this to happen. Yikes! But my prediction is your fix will work. And remember “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”
I’m wondering when the cork was glued in place…did it have time to create a bond before you did the ballasting? Most yellow glue is resistant to water, but I wonder if the alcohol played a part in the delamination.
Most of my cork roadbed was put down with yellow glue or contact cement, and a lot of it was literally drenched with “wet water” during ballasting, due to the depth of the ballast and the underlying rip-rap (crushed Durabond plaster left-over from castings) alongside areas where the landforms sloped away from the track. Drying times for those areas took several days, but none of it ever lifted like that, and I’ve never seen cork absorb water…it literally floats like a cork if it’s not secured in-place.
I’d like to see your repair be successful, but my guess is that you’ll need a redo, as similar work on that nearest track could repeat that episode.
Alas, this was just waiting for an excuse to happen, Mark. And as Wayne opines, it is about 85% likely to happen again, maybe not quite as drastic or extensive. Too much wetting on too little original glue, maybe an iffy batch of glue, cork that is more porous than the stuff around it…who knows. This spot has an issue.
To me, the problem is part adhesive and part too much cork. I think I would have lifted the turnout because I would have assumed I’d have to tidy up the surroundings anyway (so what’s another two minutes of ballast refinishing?) and cut a thin slice of cork, maybe a couple about six inches or eight inches apart to relieve any pressure. Those waffles or waves tell me there might be about 1/8" too much cork for that area.
It’s just a SWAG on my part. At the very least I would have used a thin spatula or butterknife to spread more glue under those wavy edges.
If it helps you to feel like you’re in good company, this happened to me in my yard last summer. I had laid all the dirt and glued it around early December of '19 so that the grandsons, who were to visit near spring break, would enjoy a finished layout. COVID changed that. Then in late May, I walked in to find one turnout lifted like it was an arch bridge. I had to remove it, trim 1/16" off the rails abutting the points end rails, re-insert it, and then fix and reglue the ballast and dirt. It was a pain, but fixable over maybe 20 minutes. Hasn’t happened again. Oh yeah, I also remembered to turn off the dehumidifier once I checked the gauge and found the normal 45% to have dropped to 25%. Hence, the buckle.
I’m reasonably confident that if you added more glue and straightened the whole thing out again with weight when wet, it should dry flat again. Most of the time you can rewet and redry roadbed and track and it turns out fine.
Hold on folks. Cork is waterproof (and alcohol proof) as any sophisticated wino knows. Whatever happened it wasn’t the cork that expanded by absorbing any fluid.
Something has rippled the cork and whatever that is will be under the cork. What is the substrate under the cork?
Cork sheet can be made from cork granules rather than proper cut sheets and fluids can “absorb” into whatever was used to glue the granules together. Natural cork sheet is made utilizing the integral resins as the adhesive. Other types are made with modern glued. Cut cork sheets are quite expensive and not very big.
Inexpensive sheet cork is not as water or fluid resistant as cork itself. Sheet cork used for quality flooring would be preferable but it isn’t particularly cheap. When granular cork is used to make cheaper wine bottle corks they are glued together with waterproof glue (horrible idea and all-plastic corks are a better idea. I’m a campaigner for using metal screw caps to cap good wine, well any wine but I only drink the good stuff and yes I’m a wine snob).
So next candidate is the cork sheet. Test a sample by soaking it in water to see if it is truly as waterproof as cork naturally is.
I use closed cell foam underlay because the cork I’ve seen supplied for model railroads is highly suspect. Cork roadbed is even moulded with rubber granules included to increase bend ability presumably. At least rubber and cork granules are comparably waterproof. I haven’t tested the glue but generally rubber needs a waterproof glue because no glue can enter the rubber (nor the city firvthat matter). Foam works far better for purpose though.
Great photos and explanation of what happened. That is terrible to read/see. What type of glue did you use? I’d rebuild the area b/c you don’t want future derailments or other issues.
That’s really unfortunate. Re-doing things is never fun. I nailed all my cork, so hopefully I won’t have that problem when I ballast (next few weeks actually). I like mechanical bonds, and hate chemical bonds.
I used Elmers glue and a putty knife on sheet cork, but I did not get 100% coverage. The base was foam. Perhaps I should have sprayed water or alcohol on the glue to get complete coverage, but I did not. I was worried about:
Problem 1 the glue bleeds through sheet cork in places. Wax paper underneath the paint cans and boards solved that.
Problem 2 There were areas of cork that were not glued and felt like bubbles. As a doctor, I had access to syringes so I mixed up diluted white glue and injected the bubbles and weighted them. Whatever the date is on my avatar is how long they have remained glued and trouble free.
I just did a quick search online for “cork swelling”. Some people say it does. Others say it doesn’t. Yikes.
Since this swelling of cork roadbed so far SEEMS to only happen on occasion to the lucky winners, I wonder if there is a difference in the qualities of the cork. And how much of the cork is Cork. And whether or not OUR cork should or shouldn’t have some sort of (waterproofing?) treatment.
I dunno.
I’m still voting for the shrinking going down over a few days, and all being OK.
Since I’m still fairly new at this, my answer probably means very little.
When the cork sheet swelled (or whatever it did), it did not go back to being flat even after it dried. I eventually used a knife and putty knife and cut out the sections of cork that caused the problem. It was not fun, it made a mess, and I had to redo a lot of ballast, scenery, and several pieces of track.
I’m sorry that I clicked on this thread. It has brought back some bad memories that I had put out of mind.
The sheet cork is not the same stuff as track cork even though they both have cork in them. Cork bulletin boards warp all the time when made wet, roadbed dose not. Different fillers and proubly glue.
