I suppose I should take this time to point out what cork is, why I'm using it and alternatives. Cork, not to be confused with the city in Ireland (which coincidentally I've been to) is used in MR to create a sub-road bed. Real railroads are built on beds of gravel to control water drainage, just like car roads. Ok I'm over simplifying the building process, but that's it. Water control. Except a railroad has to deal with massive weight at great speeds. The speed makes things rattle and move, not great from an engineering perspective. Wooden ties are great for keeping vibrations down, though there are new cement ones now that work and are better. wow do I get off topic.
The cork for model railroads is used for two main reasons - 1) to give the bevel effect so that it appears that its real and 2) to dampen the noise of the trains running on bare wood - again realism.
There are options - not use anything, use foam board instead of traditional lumber as the base for everything or use a foam subroad replacement.
I went with cork. So I bought two types, one for the 'yard' layout, that's the big sheet since there's a lot of track in the space and the stuff that goes under the track when it leaves the yard.
Here's a picture of the second type, the one specifically made for N scale track.
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| From Trains 2010 |
I've since discovered that I bought way too much of the one and not enough of the other. Naturally.
I spent a couple hours aligning my first track bits, re-doing it, checking, measuring over and over again. Then glued it down. Then I realized that I didn't think about my under the table servo that would operate the switches automatically. Drat. and my servo's were still being shipped from Hong Kong (2.49 each thank you very much!) so I didn't know what or how much clearance they'd need. So I dithered a bit for the next week, got another three or four feet of track down while I waited.
All in all felt super unproductive.
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