I am just back into RR. I started with an Atlas 4 x 8 plan. Had it pretty much all layed out when my son said the Turntable looked like a toy, so I purchased the 90" Walthers. My question is what do I do with all the cork roadbed leading up to the turn table. The approach is only about 14" from a turnout. Do I try and taper the roadbed or completely remove it all or try to raise the turntable to meet the cork. Help.
Thanks.
Lou (a 76 year old Kid)
Most layout I have seen do not use the cork raised roadbed in their train yards
Most train yards are flat, you do not find drainage channels between the various tracks,
Having said that when you enter the yard area and you are using cork roadbed you need to have the track elevation decline slightly to meet the lower yard elevation.
Some model railroaders buy sheet cork and use it for their yard areas, I, myself just used the top of the 1" foam board. Painted and then covered with ballast. I then carved drainage ditches around the perimeter of the rail yard.
The Cornerstone turntable has a lip, and sits on the foam, in my case. I only needed to raise the tracks leading to the turntable slightly, I used a few old business cards to raise the lead in tracks.
I used cork sheets in the yard and around the turntable pit. Just set the tt down on the cork and the lip thickness should be about the same thickness as the ties on your track. You just cut the ties away at the tt lip and glue them with ACC.
-Bob
I do it the same way as farrellaa except that I use Woodland Scenics foam sheets.
Rich
I’d opt for tapering the cork down to grade level. I used coarse sandpaper (#36, since I have several hundred sheets of the stuff [:-^]) and it took only a couple of minutes to do the track shown in the photo below. It’s the curved track leading from the mains (light-coloured ballast) to the industrial area (cinders and dirt ballast), and the grade extends about 16". The turnouts at both ends are beyond the ends of the slight grade.
Since HO cork roadbed is about one scale foot thick, and your 14" available area is pretty much one hundred HO scale feet, that’s only a 1% grade, not likely to cause problems for any locos or rolling stock.
If you raise the turntable, you’ll also need to raise the roundhouse, so you might as well bring the track down to grade as soon as possible. [swg]
Wayne
If you taper the roadbed, be sure to use gentle transitions so couplers won’t uncouple when moving vertically (this will be more of a problem if you run long wheelbase cars). A few places on my layout where I should have tapered the track down to a lower level, I opted to keep it level so I didn’t have any potential problem areas in the future. Wayne: Very nice layout and scenery!
Isn’t 1 HO scale foot closer to 1/8"? (12"/87=0.1379" I remember someone saying .011 is about a scale inch too).
Thanks for your kind words, Delray.
You’re right about 1/8" being close to an HO scale foot, and I just now re-measured the cork - the piece to which I referred in my earlier post is 5/32" on a tape measure, and about 1’4" on an HO scale rule, while the next piece down in the pile measured 3/16" or about 1’6" HO. It looks like they may be from different manufacturers, as the colours aren’t the same, either. [banghead]
That will make the grade just a little bit steeper, (1.5%, as there’s 14" - about 100’ HO in which to work)but as long as the taper is constant, it shouldn’t cause any operational problems.
Wayne
I have 1/8" thick Homabed for mainline roadbed and cut their tapered pieces to 6" long to lower the track for yards and sidings. That produces a 2% grade over 6". Not a problem with any of my equipment including 85’ passenger cars and long passenger diesels.
Dante