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How to lay underlay?


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I am starting out with a smallish end to end layout. 

 

I previously has a 6m by 3m round the wall layout on which I used cork tiles as underlay to give the rails that raised look. 

 

However, with this current layout it is going to be a TMD and so raised track might look a bit odd. 

 

I'm thinking of buying 3mm fibre underlay and laying over all of the baseboard. 

 

Does this sound like a reasonable plan? I don't really want to lay directly onto the ply baseboard.  

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If you only used the cork previously in order to give the 'raised' look, but don't want that on this layout, then why bother? Why do you not want to lay directly onto the ply (just curious...)?

 

It would be noisy  -  un-damped ply will act like a soundboard............

Edited by tractor_37260
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It would be noisy  -  un-damped ply will act like a soundboard............

 

I lay my track directly on to 4mm MDF (to which I have applied one coat of matt varnish) giving a beautifully flat surface. Mounting that on a sheet of cork (or other sound insulator), but not gluing it to it, will greatly reduce any unwanted sound transmission.

Generally though my locomotives run quietly anyway, the one exception being a tiny O&K diesel which has a two-stage worm-gear worm-gear transmission which is noisy but sounds so like the prototype that I have had to answer a number of queries at shows as to how I managed to get a sound chip and speaker into such a tiny locomotive!

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But, as discussed many times, as soon as the track is ballasted, the sound-deadening effect of the cork is lost.

That depends on how thick the cork was to start with. If using 3mm thick cork, there is still a considerable thickness that is unaffected by any adhesives used to secure either it or the ballast.

 

Jim

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But he's laying track for a depot, so can dispense with ballasting in the conventional sense.  The track needs to be as low as possible to the baseboard, and my instinct would be to lay directly to the baseboard and build up the scenic treatment around it for the correct 'set in to the mud' look.  Speeds will be low and most modern stock is pretty quiet; I cannot see noise being much of an issue even if the layout is in a living room.

 

But if you are concerned about noise, then the cork underlay should cover the whole board with the track laid directly on top.

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