I'm wondering what typical measurements of HO roadbed are. How thick is it? how wide is the base of the roadbed? How wide is the shoulder where the track gets set on? I've recently been able to start stocking up on engines and rolling stock so I made a small test track piece with a manual turnout on a 4 foot long 1x4 pine board. I held down the track with nail spikes and with the ease of it (plus the cool little blue tack hammer I got to bought) I kind of got the spike nail bug. It brought up an idea of using something like luan board cut out to form the road bed and then spike down. The nails I have are 1/2" so I might have to get longer nails (I know I've seen them in 3/4") to nail down throught he flex trak ties, the wood roadbed, and the plywood bench work top. I know it might use a little more ballast when it comes that time, having to use the ballast to form the angled sides instead of a formed cork, but I can deal with that. Just wanted to get some numbers and maybe some ideas and suggestions. I will of course start everything off cheap and easy wtih flex track, mass produced turnouts and whatever roadbed, but eventually all track and turnouts would be replaced with handlaid.
Why go through the trouble of fabricating your own roadbed? There is so much ready made stuff available, i.e. cork roadbed from various sources or that WS stuff. Use roadbed for your mainline trackage and put your spurs and sidings directly on your subroadbed, if it is covered by some kind of noise reducing material. In any case, don´t use wood as a roadbed and try not to nail the track to the roadbed. Use latex caulk for glueing the track to the roadbed.
A lot has been said about these techniques here in the forum - do a search!
quick, get rid of that hammer!! you are about to bash something and tear it up. try drilling a hole with a dremel tool and push the nail or spike in with a pair of small needle nose pliers.
grizlump
As is usually the case on forums, I disagree with the latex caulk suggestion. If you ever change your track plan, the latex caulk pretty much prevents you from reusing your track. If you glue it down with water soluble glue [I use Titebond Original Formula], you can soak it in detergent/water and brush the glue/ballast off. I have used some track on three layouts. Latex may reduce the noise factor, but that has never been an important consideration for me. But I agree with avoiding plywood for roadbed when cork or foam works so much better. And of course there is Hom-a-bed for the Homasote fans. Personally, I wouldn't let a sheet of Homasote near my shop, but that's just me.
On my last layout, I used 1/2 inch plwood (5 plys) topped by Homosote road bed. I used a saber saw to cut the plywould about 1/2 inch wider that the homesote on both sides so that I had a place to staple the scenery screen base. I also used a sabre saw to cut out the road bed fom the homosote which was a 1/4 inch wider on both sides than the ties. I glued Cover House wood ties and spiked down Code 100 brass rail. The only problem was that most of the layout was double tracked and there was a flat between each track that was not very prototypical. I tried using a box cutter to cut slanted edges and then chiseled out the center for the drainage ditches. Way too much work, and VERY messy.
In the test oval that I am about to build in my garage, I will be using the saber saw cut plywood sub roadbed topped with cork roadbed. I will spray paint the whole thing with a grey stone rattle can that looks a lot like medium grey ballast and then use latex caulk to put down the cork roadbed. I have plenty of bricks, which I will use to weigh down the cork so that it lies nice and flat. I will then use a shurform plane to bevel the edges of the cork and then paint the whole shebang.
I am using ME Code 83 flex track, which actually looks much better than my hand laid Code 100 brass rail. I am making the No. 8 switches using the FastTracks fixtures. What a pleasure that is.
So am I going to get an answer or just more posts telling me what to do? It sort of goes against every piece of advice I've gotten so far on this forum, to do what everyone tells me too. I'm not going to buy a dremel, too expensive, and after all my tack holes are drilled I would never use the thing. I tacked some test track down and didn't have any problems with smashing rails or squashing ties. I guess maybe I was too careful when I did it.
MILW-RODRI'm wondering what typical measurements of HO roadbed are. How thick is it? how wide is the base of the roadbed? How wide is the shoulder where the track gets set on?
Depends on what you are modeling. Some track is raised well above the landscape around, other is essentially level with the ground, with no discernible slope away from the track. Look at some pictures of your prototype to decide what you want for your layout.
Woodland Scenics H0 scale track bed is 0.20" (5 mm) thick. Which corresponds to 0.20" x 87.1 = 17.4" - or about a foot and a half in full scale.
Width at top - wide enough for track, and possibly for a level area beside the track for a conductor to walk on without stumbling off the embankment to break his neck when going back along his train to find a broken coupler or leaking hose or whatever. 3 feet of real life walk space outside the track is about 0.40" in H0 scale, track is about 1 1/2" wide - call it 2 " wide or so on top.
Slope on side - whatever looks natural to you for your application. For simplicity, you can just do 45 degrees - which is usually fairly easy to cut. If you need the slope gentler later, you can always just add more ballast on the outside.
Grin, Stein
Thanks Stein, your always helpful. I decided on total freelance so its all up to my discresion. The 1/4" I was thinking using seems right although looking at the prototypical height it seems kind of tall. I know I've heard some people complaing that 3/16 and 1/4 thick cork roadbed was too small. Of course now all this dumb talk on the post as started to lean me away from using a wood roadbed. I'm hoping to find some scrap plywood or something when I get that far just to try it out, will also help me figure out how much ballast I want under the tracks.
Whats so evil against using quality plywood as roadbed? Lunan plywood accepts spikes/ nails without splitting and is extremely stable , i've been using 1/4 Lunan plywood atop spline roadbed for a number of years as a base for handlaid track, I trim to the width of the ties and slightly bevel the edges, no reason you couldn't do the same regardless of your chosen track product . I understand there is now foam tape available that can be used to supress some measure of noise, personally I don't use any underlayment, I leave that decision and implementation up to you.
Guess no one here remembers Tru-Scale roadbed? Let the rabid comments commence
Dave
wanna bet ? everybody on medicare remembers tru-scale roadbed. their switches weren't bad for the time either. i still have several yards of their O scale roadbed with the ties milled in. i use it for O scale static display models.
West Coast S Whats so evil against using quality plywood as roadbed? Lunan plywood accepts spikes/ nails without splitting and is extremely stable , i've been using 1/4 Lunan plywood atop spline roadbed for a number of years as a base for handlaid track, I trim to the width of the ties and slightly bevel the edges, no reason you couldn't do the same regardless of your chosen track product . I understand there is now foam tape available that can be used to supress some measure of noise, personally I don't use any underlayment, I leave that decision and implementation up to you. Guess no one here remembers Tru-Scale roadbed? Let the rabid comments commence Dave
grizlump9 Guess no one here remembers Tru-Scale roadbed? Let the rabid comments commence wanna bet ? everybody on medicare remembers tru-scale roadbed. their switches weren't bad for the time either. i still have several yards of their O scale roadbed with the ties milled in. i use it for O scale static display models. grizlump
Geez, you had to mention that "M" word! I used True-scale with the millled ties and turnout blocks way back in the seventies, never had any reliabilty issues or guage problems.
MILW-RODR West Coast S Whats so evil against using quality plywood as roadbed? Lunan plywood accepts spikes/ nails without splitting and is extremely stable , i've been using 1/4 Lunan plywood atop spline roadbed for a number of years as a base for handlaid track, I trim to the width of the ties and slightly bevel the edges, no reason you couldn't do the same regardless of your chosen track product . I understand there is now foam tape available that can be used to supress some measure of noise, personally I don't use any underlayment, I leave that decision and implementation up to you. Guess no one here remembers Tru-Scale roadbed? Let the rabid comments commence Dave Finally someone on my side. I would like to have some urban and of course...country setting isn't really the right term if I still go with Oklahoma based freelance idea but it bet describes what I'm trying to say. I think on the non-urban setting I would make the roadbed a little wider to provide an engineer with a walking path. I will still use pink foam for a scenery base, I don't like any of the paper mache type products. It may only be like that 9mm thick foam board though, nothing real thick like 1 or 2 inches. The plan I'm following didn't have any water on it but I think I would like to add a small stream. I might still end up changing local though. I've been bred born and raised in WI so a layout with little to no trees is just not going to look right to me. Or one with out any kind of water on it, even if it is just a small creek narrow enough to hop over. But, again, I grew up around woods and lakes, so I know on some level I'm subconciously biased towards greenary.
Being California based this I can add that Oaklahoma has plenty of varied topography, best advice is to try to focus on a selected area for inspiration, for example, my chosen local is noted for its lack of trees, most felled for citrus plantings and rangeland use, but we have hundreds of thousands of acres of grass land, I figure for my new layout it will require in the neighborhood of 2 tons of varied color static grass and several thousand yards of fake fur to pull this off !
Try doing some research on eastern Oaklahoma, might find just what you are looking for.