Recommended track bed height for industrial area ?

[steinjr]

 Hi --

 I am working on a switching layout set in an industrial area, and finally have started putting down track bed.

 I have been using Woodland Scenics H0 scale track bed (which is 5mm/0.20" thick - which corresponds to 0.20"x87.1 = 17" - almost a foot and a half high track bed for the prototype).

 That looks normal enough for the running track (the "mainline") through the industrial area, which is on its own separate right of way - see the tracks covered red in the figure below.

 But somehow it looks too hefty for the industry sidings (the tracks not colored in the track plan below). 

 What do you guys use for industry sidings - do you use the same track bed as for the mainline, or do you e.g. go down to N-scale trackbed or some such thing ?  I see that the WS N-scale one seems to be 3mm/0.12" - about 10" high for the prototype. Would that be way too small to look normal for H0 scale industry sidings ?

 Also I have one industry (a warehouse) where I want the track (colored green in the track plan below) to run through a parking lot/unloading area last bit before entering into the building at ground level.

  I was thinking I would just glue (or technically I guess caulk) the tracks directly on top of the layout pink foam, and just use styrene or sculptamold to build up on the landscape both sides of the track to get the surrounding parking lot surface even with the top of the rails. 

 Or is this a bad idea ? Should I use track bed here too, and just compensate by building up the surrounding parking lot even more (track bed+ties+rails) ?

 Also - last couple of questions for now - if you use different track bed heights - how long (and how) do you make transitions between different track bed heights ?

 Would it be too extreme to transition from 0.2" mainline track bed down to industry parking lot at 0 elevation at the start of my parking lot in 12" of siding (ie a 1.7% down grade)  ?

 Track plan:

  

 Smile,
 Stein

 

[pcarrell]

Taking a cue from the prototype, it looks like little to no raised ballast is the rule of the day to me.

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j319/pcarrell/Prototype%20Train%20Photos/8-16-0713.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j319/pcarrell/Prototype%20Train%20Photos/8-16-076.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j319/pcarrell/Prototype%20Train%20Photos/Picture053.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j319/pcarrell/Prototype%20Train%20Photos/6-25-079.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j319/pcarrell/Prototype%20Train%20Photos/GonFortville3-18-075.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j319/pcarrell/Prototype%20Train%20Photos/GonFortville3-18-071.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j319/pcarrell/Prototype%20Train%20Photos/Picture0023-20-072.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j319/pcarrell/Prototype%20Train%20Photos/Picture008-1.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j319/pcarrell/Prototype%20Train%20Photos/Captured2006-8-1200031.jpg

 

[tomikawaTT]

This is purely Union Pacific prototype practice, but is probably fairly typical.

New industrial park, tracks laid during the 21st century.  The main switching lead is laid on ballast about 12" deep (that is, under the ties.)  The secondary tracks are mostly imbedded in asphalt, since trucks use the same loading doors.

Older industrial area.  The approach to the main (about 1/2 km long) is ballasted.  Once across the first road (crossed at grade) the track is basically at ground level, imbedded in a mixture of dirt and gravel.  Repaired turnout was filled in with clean ballast, but still basically ground level.

In both cases, the main lead is on private right-of-way.  The major street crossing in the new area has crossing flashers, and very obvious bright orange plastic insulated rail joiners at the ends of the detection section.

Hope this is helpful.

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

[bogp40]

Although the prototype used lighter rail and lower profile of ballast on the sidings, smaller yards and industrial areas, you may be right in keeping your track at the same elevation. For simple sidings, yes you could transition to lower, but it sounds like you have much more going on in the design.

My club uses L girder and open frame. The use of risers allows elevation changes at yards, siding and such. It would be a bit more difficult to elevate the foam base. Filling in the low areas with sheet foam (like the 1/4 and 3/8" fanfold foam insulation used for vinyl siding would help the build up.

Most of our yards and industries are ballasted to most barely even show ties. The main yards do have roadbed (1/4" pine) Areas between tracks are filled with glued sand, plastered or filled with a 1/4" wood filler. then the area is ballasted or the roadwork/ asphalt is done. Some industrial areas the tracks are in the pavement or there are numerous grade crossings.

This area was mostly filled w/ plaster over wire screen.

Some of the plaster filling being done on the yard lead. The lead is actually a gauntlet track. Haven't figured a good way to bury the double rails in pavement yet.

Hope some of this helps.

 

[dehusman]

Depending on the age of the industrial park the tops of the ties should be anywhere from level with the surface (in which case you would have to cut a slot into the foam and lower the track) to essentially on top of the surface.

It varies and you can vary the effect on your layout.

Dave H.

[desertdog]

To answer some of your questions regarding construction technique, in the case of my own layouts, I have used N scale roadbed (Woodland Scenics) in a few places, and in others I have just laid the sidings on the base surface material, be it plywood or pink foam.

The biggest problem you will encounter is in building the transition slope from the main track to the sidings.   I have used the styrofoam transition ramps that Woodland Scenics makes but found it just about as easy to make one out of layers of styrene plastic. Start with longer pieces and stack shorter lengths on top of them until you have the desired slope angle. I made one out of a wooden shim that worked out okay, as well.  You can buy a bunch of them cheap at any hardware store.

You need to make sure that the transition is at least as long as the longest car that will use it.  Even then, it may not be long enough to keep cars from uncoupling by themselves.  A bit of experimentation may be necessary here. 

If you are going to connect different heights ("weights") of rail, I recommend the Walthers transition sections (Code 100 to 83 and code 83 to 70).   They come as a straight section but you can put some bend in them by removing some of the runners between the ties.

Your layout plan looks interesting.  I like a plan that serves a lot of industry--after all, that's what railroads do...  Good luck with it!

John Timm

 

[markpierce]

Philip,

For your layout, I recommend putting all the track at ground level, with some parts with the ground level at the base of the rail, and other parts (usually immediately adjacent to an industry or where vehicles will be operating) with the ground level at the top of the rail.

Mark

[jrbernier]

Stein,

  Woodland Scenics sells 12" by 24" 'sheet stock' of their roadbed material.  I think this would work out best for you.  There would be no 'transition' and there really si not much of a ballast profile in idustrial area anyway.  I use cork sheet stock(Midwest Products) for my yard and my 'Swift Plant'.

Jim Bernier

[selector]

Stein, I used a yellow 3 mm vinyl carpet underlay.  We had our basement finished a couple of years ago, including wall to wall industrial carpet of the type you would find in a shopping mall store.  The shop that did the installation had about 2 m square of a roll end and the guy asked if I could use it.  He gave it to me with a smile.  Otherwise, I would urge you to look online for sheets of thin cork.  Tom (tstage) comes to mind as someone who has either researched this and/or used it.  Again, you would want something between 2-4 mm...?

I can tell you that my yard is dead silent.  It sits atop 5/8" plywood (14 mm) which should be somewhat noisy.   But the underlay I mentioned is glued to that with a light layer of latex caulk (also absorbant), and then I spread real garden soil that I had sifted to remove bug carcasses, twigs, larger pebbles, and clumps, etc.  That layer varies, truthfully, but averages 3-4 mm thick, and it was mixed with plaster and sprayed with a light glue to keep it solid.  The tracks, however, are fixed atop the yellow layer only...no dirt under them except as added around them later to detail them properly.  So, when all was done, the rail height disparity would be in the order of 2 mm between the higher mains and the yard tracks.

[steinjr]

  Philip, Chuck, Bob, Dave, John, Mark and Jim --

 Edit: fixed a typo and added a question: 

Thank you all for your replies. So summarizing what I have learned from you all:

 

• It would be perfectly okay to not have much (or any) roadbed in an industrial area like the one I am modelling. I can either caulk the tracks directly to the base surface, or use e.g Woodland Scenics sheets (for soundproofing) to get a flat surface without obvious roadbed shoulders along the track.

 

• Around a track that is supposed to be imbedded in a parking lot, instead of laying the ties on the surface and the raising a parking lot surface to the level of the top of the rails (ie ties+rail height), I could carve a shallow trench in the parking lot to lower ties and rail below ground. Question: how do you get the trench even enough under the tracks ?

 

• Good natural place to have transition from higher roadbed to lower is at road crossings.

 

• A good way of gradually transitioning from high to low roadbed is using several layouts layers of styrene pieces in a step fashion (longest, shorter, shorter, shortest). Transition should be longer than the longest car I run (I was planning to run 40 & 50' cars - about 5.5" to 7" long in H0 scale, and planned to make transition at least 12", maybe 15" long).

 

• If I want to also change rail size (I am not planning to - I am using code 75 throughout this layout, since all of it is inside the industrial park), use Walthers 100-to-83 and 83-to-75 straight sections.

 

 Thank you all very much!

 Stein

 

[steinjr]

 Experimented with taking the track bed down fra 0.20" to 0 level - using seven 0.02" thick styrene strips of decreasing length laid on top of each other over 12" of track.

 Works fine. Thanks for the tip!

 

 Smile,
 Stein

 

[markpierce]

  Philip, Chuck, Bob, Dave, John, Mark and Jim --

 Edit: fixed a typo and added a question: 

Thank you all for your replies. So summarizing what I have learned from you all:

• It would be perfectly okay to not have much (or any) roadbed in an industrial area like the one I am modelling. I can either caulk the tracks directly to the base surface, or use e.g Woodland Scenics sheets (for soundproofing) to get a flat surface without obvious roadbed shoulders along the track.
• Around a track that is supposed to be imbedded in a parking lot, instead of laying the ties on the surface and the raising a parking lot surface to the level of the top of the rails (ie ties+rail height), I could carve a shallow trench in the parking lot to lower ties and rail below ground. Question: how do you get the trench even enough under the tracks ?
• Good natural place to have transition from higher roadbed to lower is at road crossings.
• A good way of gradually transitioning from high to low roadbed is using several layouts layers of styrene pieces in a step fashion (longest, shorter, shorter, shortest). Transition should be longer than the longest car I run (I was planning to run 40 & 50' cars - about 5.5" to 7" long in H0 scale, and planned to make transition at least 12", maybe 15" long).
• If I want to also change rail size (I am not planning to - I am using code 75 throughout this layout, since all of it is inside the industrial park), use Walthers 100-to-83 and 83-to-75 straight sections.

 Thank you all very much!

 Stein

Don't lay the track in a trench.  Railroads/property owners would build up earth, add gravel, or lay asphalt or cement to bring up the "ground" level to rail height when it was needed.  Besides being more prototypical if you followed that practice, it will save you effort.

Mark

[steinjr]

Stein, I used a yellow 3 mm vinyl carpet underlay.  We had our basement finished a couple of years ago, including wall to wall industrial carpet of the type you would find in a shopping mall store.  The shop that did the installation had about 2 m square of a roll end and the guy asked if I could use it.  He gave it to me with a smile.  Otherwise, I would urge you to look online for sheets of thin cork.  Tom (tstage) comes to mind as someone who has either researched this and/or used it.  Again, you would want something between 2-4 mm...?

I can tell you that my yard is dead silent.  It sits atop 5/8" plywood (14 mm) which should be somewhat noisy.   But the underlay I mentioned is glued to that with a light layer of latex caulk (also absorbant), and then I spread real garden soil that I had sifted to remove bug carcasses, twigs, larger pebbles, and clumps, etc.  That layer varies, truthfully, but averages 3-4 mm thick, and it was mixed with plaster and sprayed with a light glue to keep it solid.  The tracks, however, are fixed atop the yellow layer only...no dirt under them except as added around them later to detail them properly.  So, when all was done, the rail height disparity would be in the order of 2 mm between the higher mains and the yard tracks.

 Hi Crandell --

 Sorry - didn't see your post when I posted to thank the others for their input. A 3 mm (1/8") thick subroadbed would be about the thickness of the Woodland Scenics N-scale track bed.

 So - you have the yellow vinyl carpet under the whole area, caulk down (if there is such a word) the track to the vinyl, and then fill between the tracks with sifted dirt so you reduce the height difference. Mmmm - that also is a good idea.

  Oh well - guess I will just have to pick one set of parameters and try it. If I don't like the result, it is easy enough to tear it up again and try something else - I used caulk instead of glue :-)

 Smile,
 Stein

 

 

[steinjr]

  Philip, Chuck, Bob, Dave, John, Mark and Jim --

 Edit: fixed a typo and added a question: 

Thank you all for your replies. So summarizing what I have learned from you all:

• It would be perfectly okay to not have much (or any) roadbed in an industrial area like the one I am modelling. I can either caulk the tracks directly to the base surface, or use e.g Woodland Scenics sheets (for soundproofing) to get a flat surface without obvious roadbed shoulders along the track.
• Around a track that is supposed to be imbedded in a parking lot, instead of laying the ties on the surface and the raising a parking lot surface to the level of the top of the rails (ie ties+rail height), I could carve a shallow trench in the parking lot to lower ties and rail below ground. Question: how do you get the trench even enough under the tracks ?
• Good natural place to have transition from higher roadbed to lower is at road crossings.
• A good way of gradually transitioning from high to low roadbed is using several layouts layers of styrene pieces in a step fashion (longest, shorter, shorter, shortest). Transition should be longer than the longest car I run (I was planning to run 40 & 50' cars - about 5.5" to 7" long in H0 scale, and planned to make transition at least 12", maybe 15" long).
• If I want to also change rail size (I am not planning to - I am using code 75 throughout this layout, since all of it is inside the industrial park), use Walthers 100-to-83 and 83-to-75 straight sections.

 Thank you all very much!

 Stein

Don't lay the track in a trench.  Railroads/property owners would build up earth, add gravel, or lay asphalt or cement to bring up the "ground" level to rail height when it was needed.  Besides being more prototypical if you followed that practice, it will save you effort.

 Hi Mark --  

 That's what I discovered too - did a small scale test on a piece of scrap blue styrofoam. Much easier to build up the parking lot around the rail a little (about 5 mm) than to dig down a 5 mm trench along the track. Thanks!

 Stein

 

 

[selector]

Stein, you can see the effect I derived using the technique I described to you.  BTW, it isn't yellow rug, but yellow (rug) underlay.  It is a soft layer for shock absorption to make carpeting feel more luxurious and softer on the feet.

And, yes, I agree that N-scale was a reasonable solution as well, and why I thought about Tom who I believe may have used that thickness, but bought several sheets of it... I may be wrong.

-Crandell

[DeadheadGreg]

Selector - is that from your layout?  I'm going to be building a similar scene on my layout...  thats the perfect example.  I want to see more from that layout!  haha

 

stein - don't want to be picky, but in the picture you posted, it looks as if you have a kink in the track in the lowest track connection, the one closest to the bottom of the picture. 

[steinjr]

stein - don't want to be picky, but in the picture you posted, it looks as if you have a kink in the track in the lowest track connection, the one closest to the bottom of the picture. 

 You are right. One of the connectors wasn't all the way in. Will fix it before I get around to fastening the tracks to the roadbed.

 Thanks for pointing it out.

 Grin,
 Stein

 

[selector]

Selector - ... I want to see more from that layout!  haha

 

... 

Okay, one more image, but that's all 'cuz it's Stein's thread. I am glad you like it.