Dock Green

[KTM]

Interesting point, Chaz.

 

I'm about to embark on the construction of a small O gauge layout and was fully intending to use cork because "that's what everyone else does" ! I am very interested to hear about your experience but more importantly, has anyone out there in 7mm land built layouts both with and without cork underlay who can provide a like-for-like comparison?

 

I'm a little concerned about running noise but mine will be a slower-speed shunting layout. I'd rather not be forced to use Copydex either, for the reasons Chaz has mentioned. I would like a shoulder of ballast on the main running lines at least.

 

What are the alternatives to cork, chaps?

 

Jon

[Donw]

Balsa either 1/16th or 1/18th  depending on what ballast depth you want is an option. You could also use picture framers mounting board (expecially if you can get offcuts). However if you use PVA with stone ballast it will set hard and spoil any sound deadening properties. I also reckon you could use corrougated cardboard. I have a layout which I started as a quickie in 2005 but it has spent most of its time in store. I used scrap polystyrene on the ply and glued the track down using a few pins right through to the ply to hold it in place. Never finished ballasting and not had much use but seems possible.

 

Don

 

apologies Chas shouldn't be adding it to your thread.

Edited January 19, 2013 by Donw

[two tone green]

My O gauge layout I am building is laid directly onto chipboard. I don't find it noisy on plain track but it does have a rumble to it when a heavy loco goes over point work which is not unlike the sound you hear on the real thing.

 

I have always used chipboard and never had any problems with it. The layout is not transportable and built in a room in my house so no problems with temperature or humidity. Cutting and drilling is easy and it takes screws and nails with no problems. Also if something needs gluing like cable supports under the board, superglue works well on it.

[chaz]

 

Balsa either 1/16th or 1/18th  depending on what ballast depth you want is an option. You could also use picture framers mounting board (expecially if you can get offcuts). However if you use PVA with stone ballast it will set hard and spoil any sound deadening properties. I also reckon you could use corrougated cardboard. I have a layout which I started as a quickie in 2005 but it has spent most of its time in store. I used scrap polystyrene on the ply and glued the track down using a few pins right through to the ply to hold it in place. Never finished ballasting and not had much use but seems possible.

 

 

Don

 

apologies Chas shouldn't be adding it to your thread.

 

No problem at all with you adding to my thread Don. The more the merrier!

 

My only feeling - in the light of a few problems that have become apparent on Dock Green - is that it is essential that the roadbed should be flat and firm and of consistent height. For that reason I would not use cork, balsa, corrugated card, foam rubber or any other material which is easily compressed. If I wanted to make ballast shoulders for a main running line I would use a man-made board. The choice would depend to some extent on the thickness wanted. Sundeala is a good, but expensive option, or plywood or MDF (although I have never used the latter for a roadbed). For a thinner effect you could use offcuts of mounting board.

 

Having been suffering for the last six months with the consequences of the decision to use Copydex on Dock Green I have to say that I find it an awful product and will not give it house room. There may well be lots of users who have followed C & L's suggestion and have had no problems with it but I much prefer PVA. However I should say that I have no intention of lifting the track on Dock Green - the ease of doing this if it has been glued down with Copydex is the only factor I can see in favour of its use.

 

End of rant.

 

Chaz

[KTM]

Apologies for my newbie-ness but I do have another question on this subject.

 

I'm going to use Peco track and probably a 9mm thick ply baseboard surface. If I use a compressable underlay, such as cork, with a constant thickness and I use PVA glue for ballast, will it just result in a loss of the sound deadening properties? I don't quite understand how the the drilling of holes in the baseboard will be any worse than without the cork. Does the cork creep over the hole, for example?

 

I was thinking of using this https://modelrailwaysolutions.co.uk/shop/index.php?route=product/product&path=44_64&product_id=246 (no connection, but others have recommended this company for baseboards).

 

Any advice here is appreciated because this is fundamental to getting started with tracklaying!

 

Thanks.

 

Jon

[chaz]

Apologies for my newbie-ness but I do have another question on this subject.

 

I'm going to use Peco track and probably a 9mm thick ply baseboard surface. If I use a compressable underlay, such as cork, with a constant thickness and I use PVA glue for ballast, will it just result in a loss of the sound deadening properties? I don't quite understand how the the drilling of holes in the baseboard will be any worse than without the cork. Does the cork creep over the hole, for example?

 

I was thinking of using this https://modelrailwaysolutions.co.uk/shop/index.php?route=product/product&path=44_64&product_id=246 (no connection, but others have recommended this company for baseboards).

 

Any advice here is appreciated because this is fundamental to getting started with tracklaying!

 

Thanks.

 

Jon

 

No need to apologise Jon. That's what a forum is for. To take your points in order....

 

My home layout has Peco track laid directly onto chipboard. The ballast is fine granite glued down with PVA and I have never noticed much noise (apart from the DCC sound which is a recent addition and welcome). I think the sound-deadening properties of cork are largely theoretical. Unless you are planning to run long trains at high speeds I think you can discount the need for it. However using PVA on top of cork is likely to negate any slight sound deadening quality it might have.

 

When drilling holes through cork the granularity and soft stretchiness of the material play merry-hell with the drill bit's position. The cork seems to wrap itself around the drill bit and grab it, usually yanking it away from the intended hole position - and the bigger the drill bit the worse the effect. This happens in spite of any centre punch mark or pilot hole. I think the only way to get an accurate hole is to cut away the cork in an small area around the intended hole with a scalpel first, which leaves you with a very obvious crater to fill in.

 

Of course Rule One applies to this as in all other aspects of railway modelling but my advice is if you have already bought the cork then either see if you can get you money back or glue them to a floor where they can't do much harm.

 

Hope  that's helpful.

 

Chaz

[KTM]

Thanks, Chaz & very helpful!

 

I haven't bought the cork yet (nor indeed the baseboard materials) so I'll have a mull over other options that may achieve a ballast shoulder - or maybe I can get away with a flatter ballast level on my plan by fixing the track directly to the baseboard. It may help that I'm going to build in some 'slightly-below-track-level' scenery towards the front of the board to add some level definition, which I feel is quite important on a small layout.

 

Jon

[David Siddall]

Well... I might have discovered a use for cork after all. I've just laid some thin sheets 'around' my trackbed using (lots of) double-sided tape and it does seem to have reduced the noise levels a bit – I guess it's acting as a dampener. The racket from my light-weight baseboards, even with track and ballast fixed with Copydex to 5mm foam-core board secured to the boards' surface with double-sided (to raise the track above board level and produce a ballast shoulder) was disappointing to say the least! If I build another layout I'm going back to hernia-inducing, old-fashion 'uncivil' engineering – solid PSE frames and equally solid tops! Apart from being quieter (IMO) they're a (insert expletive of choice here) site quicker to build!

 

I'm also going to pack any Slaters box vans I build in future with closed-cell foam... they're like little sound boxes otherwise :-/

 

David

 

PS: I agree with you Chaz... Copydex isn't all it's cracked up to be. Fortunately I've only done the headshunt and a couple of feet so far. I did a test piece last night using (yet more) double-sided carpet tape to secure a short piece of track to its foam-core trackbed. First layer of ballast stuck to it surprisingly well after a bit of finger tamping, second layer secured using the traditional dilute PVA/drop of washing-up liquid method currently drying. Fingers crossed, the trick appears to be to prevent any PVA coming into contact with the baseboard.

Edited January 23, 2013 by David Siddall

[chaz]

At the front of the layout there is a tapered space to the left of the canal that I wanted to detail as a non-railway area. I did initially think of modelling a woodyard but as soon as I started sketching possible arrangements it was clear that the space was too small for a convincing try at anything of the sort. So I have decided to model part of the sort of yard that might well exist behind a factory - nondescript sheds, heaps of "stuff", racks, scrap etc etc.

The first step was to cut a piece of foamboard to raise the level a little.



As you can see I shaved a bevel on the edge of the foamboard closest to the track which will later be a slope covered in grass and weeds. The fence dividing the area from the railway will be chain-link. The posts (in the foreground) are square section plastic with the angled tops formed by softening (very briefly!) over a candle flame and then setting the angle on a drawing. This ensured a consistent angle for the posts. The brass etches are Scalelink 4mm (!) F61 - which unfortunately seem to have vanished from their catalogue. Although these are marked 4mm they seem to me to be good for 7mm. A friend of mine gave me two frets and with careful cutting I was able to get three lengths out of them., the third length being the two offcuts overlapped slightly and soldered.

The next photo shows the foamboard glued down and painted with a grey/brown patchy mix of artist's acrylic.



The baseboard top has been drilled and the fence posts fitted. Some months ago when I was trying out foamboard as a material for buildings I made a test piece, a brick shed with a sliding door. This now found a home in the factory yard. I wanted at least one more hut/shed/office and for variety finished this as timber-built. The photo shows the foam board shell cut and assembled with PVA.



The resin windows are from Port Wynnstay. These came with flanges moulded outside the frames but these would have set the windows far too deeply in the foamboard for a wooden building so I trimmed them off so that the windows could be flush with the outer surface.

The next photo shows the two buildings being tried in place.



The wooden shed is sitting on a card plinth, representing a concrete pad. I have glued thin card as a base for the roof. I stiffened this with a strip of wood  glued in the angle of the peak.



These are the components for a small oil store. On the left some plastic oil-drums fitted with outlet pipes from 1.3mm diameter plastic rod, again formed to a bend after brief heating above a candle flame. The corrugated roof is stiffened on the underside with two narrow strips of spruce. The shelter is from more spruce spar and "planks" of thin ply. The frame in the foreground drops into the shelter and will support the three drums.

The last photo shows the oil-store shelter tried out in its position. It also shows the wooden hut "creosoted" with a black/brown mix of acrylic and with its windows and corrugated iron roof in place.



I will post more snaps as this area gets its gravel, clutter, weeds etc - and of course the chain-link added to the posts...WTS

Chaz

Edited January 22, 2013 by chaz

[PatB]

Looking very good.  I don't want to split hairs, but wouldn't it be more likely that the top of the fence would incline outwards?  That's assuming that it would have been property of the industrial owner rather than the railway.

[chaz]

Looking very good.  I don't want to split hairs, but wouldn't it be more likely that the top of the fence would incline outwards?  That's assuming that it would have been property of the industrial owner rather than the railway.

 

Not sure about that, Pat. You might be right, but have a look at the photo....

 

 

Road on the right, premises on the left. So which way round would a fence between the railway and a factory be? A photo of that situation might tell us. Anybody got one?

[PatB]

Hmm.  Interesting.  I've always assumed that the top would slope outwards towards the side which intruders would be trying to climb, it being harder to get around an overhang going up than coming down.

 

Which way round the fence is would, I assume be dependent on who erected it.  The industry, would, I suspect, be more interested in keeping intruders from the rail side out.  I'm not sure why but I felt it would be more likely that the fence would be privately owned in this case as I tend not to think of railway fences being chain link until relatively recently.  That's only based on limited observation and not hard historical fact though.

[chaz]

Hmm.  Interesting.  I've always assumed that the top would slope outwards towards the side which intruders would be trying to climb, it being harder to get around an overhang going up than coming down.

 

Which way round the fence is would, I assume be dependent on who erected it.  The industry, would, I suspect, be more interested in keeping intruders from the rail side out.  I'm not sure why but I felt it would be more likely that the fence would be privately owned in this case as I tend not to think of railway fences being chain link until relatively recently.  That's only based on limited observation and not hard historical fact though.

 

Pat,

 

It's not clear to me which way round the posts should go - I based my fence on the one in the photograph, which is two minutes walk from my house. Fortunately the posts on Dock Green are not glued in, just a push fit in the holes, so they could be turned round if that proves to be prototypical. I would like to be more confident on the correct orientation before I fix the chain-link etch in place. So if anybody knows, better still if anybody can post a photo of chain-link fencing between an industrial site and the railway that would be very helpful.

 

Chaz

[chaz]

Please excuse the flash photo' - it's so gloomy today there's not enough daylight for a decent snap....

 

 

Plenty of opportunity here for mess - oily hand-prints on the drums, spills of oil under front, maybe scattered sawdust to soak up same. I want this area to have some nice detail as it's right at the front of the layout.

 

I wanted to model taps on those outlet pipes but not sure if I can get a hole drilled neatly through the 1.3mm rod...... WTS

 

Chaz

[3 link]

I do not know if it's of any help but there is a " open " prison about 10 miles from where I live and I have noticed that the fence posts slope inwards towards the interior of the prison, obviously to help keep the lodgers in, although they seem to come and go as they please anyway .

 

Martyn.

[Steve Williams]

Well... I might have discovered a use for cork after all. I've just laid some thin sheets 'around' my trackbed using (lots of) double-sided tape and it does seem to have reduced the noise levels a bit – I guess it's acting as a dampener.

I have often wondered whether fixing cork to the underside of baseboards would have any impact as far as noise reduction is concerned insofar as it may have a damping effect on the tendency for baseboards to act as a 'sound-box'

[chaz]

I have often wondered whether fixing cork to the underside of baseboards would have any impact as far as noise reduction is concerned insofar as it may have a damping effect on the tendency for baseboards to act as a 'sound-box'

 

There's only one way to find out!   I'm not going to be testing it though - it's a possible solution to a problem I don't have using a material I dislike......

[chaz]

I do not know if it's of any help but there is a " open " prison about 10 miles from where I live and I have noticed that the fence posts slope inwards towards the interior of the prison, obviously to help keep the lodgers in, although they seem to come and go as they please anyway .

 

Martyn.

 

 Are you suggesting that the factory owner might have a similar attitude to his workers?  

[The Nth Degree]

To deaden the drum sound, and once the baseboard (including wiring) is complete, you can lay foam sheets in the cavity. That will stop any sound waves bouncing off the surfaces in the space under there and will probably stop 70-80% of the drum noise. That's what I'm going to do with mine.

 

I used to play drums in my school band, and when were mic'ed up for a performance I used to put a blanket in the bass drum. The mic picked up and broadcast the beat on the drum skin but the drum didn't sound, as that would have produced a double-hit due to the delay in the audio equipment; i.e. an almost silent bass drum.

 

I'm not totally sure I've explained that very well!

 

What I'm trying to say is that to hear my bass drum I had to use headphones as I had deadened the sound so much with the blanket.

[chaz]

Foam sounds like a good idea except that many baseboards might be like mine with quite of lot of stuff in the way - if you wanted to apply foam to these surfaces would you cut it to fit around all this?

 

 

As I said above I can't hear any drumming effect on Dock Green (which has a layer of cork right across the top surface), but also none on my home layout, which doesn't.

Edited January 23, 2013 by chaz

[chaz]

A friend of mine, who knows about these things, passed on the following about chain link fences....

 

"If the fence was erected by the railway Co. then the top would point inward, over railway land. If the yard erected it - then the tops would point over the yard. If the fence was erected by the yard there would probably be the remnants of the railway fence on railway land. It was a statutory requirement for railway companies to fence against adjoining land."

 

So I am supposing that the factory owners put up the fence and will stick with the arrangement I have. Not sure whether I will model "the remnants of the railway fence on railway land" or not, it would be a nice feature but space is so tight....

[N15class]

Yes I would fill the underside void either with foam or glass fibre type insulation. You need to trap little pockets of air to stop the sound just like you do to insulate.

[Fettster42]

Fantastic layout chaz. Discovered today and spent a pleasant evening catching up. Especially impressed by the cobbles as I plan to do something similar on my layout, but covering a bigger area so may need to find a different method,

 

Long forward to seeing how you go about dirtying up the structures.

 

Leigh

[PatB]

A friend of mine, who knows about these things, passed on the following about chain link fences....

 

"If the fence was erected by the railway Co. then the top would point inward, over railway land. If the yard erected it - then the tops would point over the yard. If the fence was erected by the yard there would probably be the remnants of the railway fence on railway land. It was a statutory requirement for railway companies to fence against adjoining land."

 

So I am supposing that the factory owners put up the fence and will stick with the arrangement I have. Not sure whether I will model "the remnants of the railway fence on railway land" or not, it would be a nice feature but space is so tight....

Fair enough.  That's actually the opposite way round to my assumption but I'll happily defer to someone with specific knowledge of the subject.

[chaz]

Fair enough.  That's actually the opposite way round to my assumption but I'll happily defer to someone with specific knowledge of the subject.

 

It might well be a legal thing. The fence would naturally be on the land perimeter, so if the tops overhung outwards they would be encroaching.....