Ain’t that the truth!
Damn
you had me stuck on Ferroequinology so I stopped mid post to go look it up, and didn’t get back to the post until I looked it up in the dictionary app on my iPad
matthew
Hello Randy!
Fantastic ideea to use a latex based adhesive to help the sound insulation. It will be a must on my new layout. I still have to find a similar product in continental Europe, as I’m sure it exists but not on this commercial name. I still have two questions for you:
1.You do use the latex adhesive both for glueing the roadbed to the base and to glue the track to the roadbed?
2.Speaking about unglueing latex caulk, do you use some specific solvent to do it?
Thanks again for the super ideea!
A friend bought the WS foam roadbed for his layout, but I didn’t enjoy installing it, and personally wouldn’t ever consider using it again. Cork is easy to install and it’s easy to install track securely on it, too.
Cork is also sandable, which is useful for creating gradual grades down to where you wish to add secondary track for industries, and roadbed is not required.
Wayne
I don’ like to speak for others, but this is a frequently discussed topic and I am sure that he does, if he still uses foam. This thread is 7 years old. We have European member will weighs in on what is available, but it is sold as caulk, not adhesive. I’d actually be a little surprised if there were no US brands, like DAP available wherever you are.
No, there is none as far as I know, that is why he empasizes thin, so if you remove track, it can be pried up easily with a putty knife. If the caulk gushes over the ties, it’s not coming up
Very interesting thread! I was thinking, what roadbed is better, and now I decided to use cork. I used WS foam roadbed for practice in ballasting, and I can confirm, that if you press too hard on ballast, it will crack.
I actually was able to sand down the WS foam - just needs a different method than with cork. I put all my sidings on that layout on the N scale WS roadbed so they sat lower than the main line. It was a combination of shimming up the N scale roadbed and sanding down the HO to get a smooth transition.
Anyway - yes, I used the caulk for roadbed to the table, and track to the roadbed.
And nothing special to remove it. If used sparingly, gently sliding a putty knife under the track lifts it off undamaged. That’s before adding and gluing down ballast - once ballasted in place, good luck, though if white glue is used as the primary adhesive for the ballast, you can probably soak it loose with enough water. If the objective is to recover the track and you don’t care about the bade, or the base is a water resistant material, soak away. The foam roadbed, when caulked down, did not cleanly come off the extruded foam base of that layout, it adhered too good. Where I had to remove some, it was not reusable. Cork, caulked to plywood - that might be recoverable, with the same careful use of a putty knife to gently slide between the cork and plywood.
I did not attempt to recover anything from my last layout, because I wasn’t going to use the same brand track. I had the whole thing carted off by a junk man. If he tookt he time to recover the track to resell, more power to him. There’s not much value in used flex track, and even used turnouts are pennies on the dollar, so I didn’t bother.
–Randy
I used WS foam roadbed (about 400 ft) for the mainline track of my current layout. The good: It is really easy/fast to install using adhesive caulk. The bad: it is much softer than cork and as others have mentioned I suspect that the easy deflection may cause ballast issues. I used cork roadbed where I need to transition from mainline track down to service/spur track.
I never worried about track noise since it’s a railroad and I don’t expect it to be quiet, I used cork painted grey to try to not show any bare spots in case my ballet flaked off. My wife nailed the down into the Homosote. Then I used caulk for the track.
I just thought, that we can use Woodland scenics Foam Putty to make smooth transition between 5mm and 3mm roadbed.