Ballasting with woodland risers and glue type

[Anonymous]

Hello Everyone,

I finished my benchwork...[:D] now I'm on my out to get my 2" foam board. I have three question. First I noticed in the Walthers book that Woodland Scenics offers foam tack glue. Has anyone used this before and if so is it good to use to glue my foam board to my benchwork, cork roadbed to the foam and track to cork. Another words is it good for everything I need to do?
My second question is once the track and roadbed are layed on the risers how do you go about ballasting the track? The risers and inclines all have slots. Do I need to create a solid base first on the risers and inclines then ballast?
My Third question is on some areas of my layout there is going to be more then one track running on an elevated area(Along side of each other and off into a yard. Can I build a area to match the elevation by just buliding it up with foam or is there something special I should take into consideration?
Thanks everyone for your time and Happy Railroading.....

Louie

[orsonroy]

QUOTE:
First I noticed in the Walthers book that Woodland Scenics offers foam tack glue. Has anyone used this before and if so is it good to use to glue my foam board to my benchwork, cork roadbed to the foam and track to cork. Another words is it good for everything I need to do?

WS foam tack glue is WAY too expensive to use on a layout. Don't bother. The only good all-around adhesive for everything you want to do is wood glue. There are other adhesive that are good for one or two of what you want to do, but not all. Essentially, in terms of both effectiveness and low cost, you'll need 2-3 adhesives:

SILICONE caulk for foam-to foam bonds, and maybe for cork to foam.
LATEX caulk for track to roadbed bonds (it'll give way if you want to move the track. Silicone won't)
WHITE GLUE for scenery bonding.
WOOD GLUE for carveable foam to foam bonds, and for general construction bonding.

QUOTE:
My second question is once the track and roadbed are layed on the risers how do you go about ballasting the track? The risers and inclines all have slots. Do I need to create a solid base first on the risers and inclines then ballast?

WS sells their products to be used all as a package. They recommend you add their plaster gauze strips over thr risers before you lay track, mostly so thet can sell you more of their stuff. Essentially, you need to fill in the holes if you don't want to use the plaster cloth. If your tracks aren't down yet, use "Great Stuff" expanding foam in a spray can. If the track is already down, use play sand or kitty litter (non-clumping) to fill in under the tracks, and use ballast over that (no use wasting a lot of ballast where you can't see it).

QUOTE:
My Third question is on some areas of my layout there is going to be more then one track running on an elevated area(Along side of each other and off into a yard. Can I build a area to match the elevation by just buliding it up with foam or is there something special I should take into consideration?

The simplest way to do this would have been to build the layout solidly out of sheets of 2: foam. Since you seem to be well past that stage (solid sheets of 1" or 2" foam are easier than the WS stuff, and easily sanded or curved to any desired profiles), I'd build a simple box out of 1" foam to support the multple tracks on an elevated line.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Orsonroy,
Very helpfull information. Where can I find that "Great Stuff" you mentioned?My track is not down as of yet so I can use it now. Also, Will wood glue be ok for gluing my foam to my benchwork?
Tahnks again for the advice..happy railroading


Louie

[Anonymous]

Louie, at Home Depot. Comes in a spray can, they call it expanding/expandable foam. Comes in a variety of names but it's the same stuff. Tell them you need to fill in a void between walls with spray foam and they'll direct you to the product.

[Anonymous]

Thank You mktrains,
Now if it would stop snowing[:(!] I will be on my way....Happy railroading.

Louie

[orsonroy]

You can successfully use wood glue to bond everything on a layout. I've done it. What I listed were my preferred adhesives.

As for the "foam in a can", Great Stuff is available at every single hardware store I've ever walked into, as well as many Walgreens and grocery stores! And they're NOT all the same: the DOW stuff in the blue can doesn't expand much and has the consistency of cotton canty. It's absolutely useless for model RR use (I found this out the hard way).

[R. Vollmar]

Ballasting on the sloped shoulders of roadbed can be difficult. What I have done is get some latex paint in an gray shade somewhat similar to your ballast color. Paint the shoulders and then sprinkle ballast on the wet paint. I have homasote roadbed and it absorbs the paint very quickly so you don't want to paint so much that it is dry when you sprinkle the ballast. I expect cork roadbed would absorb the paint more slowly but I have no experience with it. As you ballast the shoulders also do between the ties and then use any of the common ballast gluing techniques for gluing down the ballast. Be careful around turnouts because it is not difficult to glue them in a fixed positiom and a nuisance to fix. R. Vollmar

[Anonymous]

Louie
How did your track and ballast over WS risers work out.?
I'm at the same stage wondering how to best fill the slots and lay flex track before starting scenery with plaster cloth etc. I'm modeling narrow guage so I will not have much of a roadbed.

Rob
Littleton ,Co

[Anonymous]

Rob,

I experimented with some of the ideas from the wonderfull people here and what I did was I layed the track and roadbed on the risers then took some plaster cloth and put it right up against the roadbed and draped it over the sides down to the foam board base I'm using. This completely cover the sloted areas.
The other idea I'm going to try this weekend is completely cover the risers with the plaster cloth and then lay my roadbed and track . The only problem I see with this as someone mentioned above is getting it smooth enough to lay the roadbed and track.
I want to try ever possable way before making any final desicions.
Let me know if you come up with any ideas also please.
Happy Railroading,

Louie

[Anonymous]

Just a quick question regarding filling in the gaps on WS inclines. Couldn't you just moisten tissue paper and stuff it in the gaps?

[jkeaton]

I wondered about cuting a thin sheet of more foam to lay over the WS risers - or even a sheet of illustration board, or plastic signboard, or some other cardboard-type stuff that is water-resistant enough to take a layer of paint? Or, lay cork roadbed onto the risers. But I've used the WS system - I've only seen it demonstrated.

Jim