I also laid my track on cork roadbed, with one yard on sheet cork and one on the pywood base. I ran my track a long time before getting around to painting, and had plenty else to do meanwhile, so no hurry. I intended to airbrush it with several colors as you note, but had not yet unwrapped the airbrush and learned how to use it. I settled on what many suggested, using rattle can (I chose Rustoleum) camo brown commonly available. It does a nice job, adding alot, and making the Atlas flex, Walthers turnouts and Atlas (not recommended BTW) crossings blend together. I intend to add some weathering detailing (rust, etc) later. Now that I know my way with the airbrush, I would lean toward that as it would allow less air contamination, but would be harder to deal with the cleaning aspects so far from the garage cleanup area.
Paul
Modeling HO with a transition era UP bent
I am in the process of laying track (Code 83 by Atlas), cork roadbed over pink foam insulation) following the guidance in different articles in MR. Some articles call for painting track [before laying ballast] ( usually some combination involving RR Tie brown, black, etc., some say by airbrush, others use paintbrushes to paint just the sides of the rail). I am almost done, and my next plan is to run trains to search out areas where the track has problems ,etc. In the meanwhile, I am looking for some pros and cons about whether to paint, or not to paint, to airbrush or paintbrush. Thanks for any suggestions from the Forum