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hobo: I agree with pfd586. The weed cloth is really not necessary. Garden RR teack (in my humble opinion) should work just like the prototype. A trench, filled with rough fill that provides proper water drainage, will in itslef keep weeds out due to the nature of the medium itself. You can always "top off" the final ballast fill at the track/tie level with anything that looks good, but the foundation needs to be ROUGH stuff. Not gravel pebbles, or smooth sand. ROUGH so it will bond to itself in a stable manner that will hold together on its own for many years. If you are a maniac about this aspect like me, seek out Lava Crusher Fines. (No larger than 1/4 inch) and sink the trench at least 6 inches, filling it with whatever "crusher fines" you can lay your hands on. (12" is even better.) Once you have dug the trench, filled the trench with the "fines" and tamped them, lay the track. Then WALK on it. With your feet, one foot in front of the other. This will "bed" the ties into the track bed. THEN, finish off the final ballast with whatever you think looks good. You may need to touch up the final ballast over the years but the weeds, track "wiggle" and expansion/contraction problems will become a thing of the past. I learned this from the live steamers who have been garden railroading for well over 50 years, used it in Hawaii where weed growth is a MAJOR problem, and found it works better than anything I've seen or heard to date. To me, the best lesson in Garden Railroading is simply that when you take your train outside, you've put it into the REAL world where real prototypes still run, and you have to do it like the bigger guys do or you can expect problems if you don't. It's a concept kind of thing, and Einstein's Laws of Relativity apply. You just moved into the real world, relatively speaking.
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