Exploring the World of Model Railroading
…or “Making a Mess”. It was bound to happen after spinning in circles for a day, trying to figure out whether I’ve missed something glaringly obvious or not. I wasn’t ready to commit cork to the helix sub-roadbed yesterday, so today I bit the bullet. Truth be told, I did re-adjust 3 spots on the threaded rods last night where the height did not match the calculations, but that was only a matter of adding or removing a 1/32″ washer. There’s no going back now.
After painting the cork, what more is there left to do on the roadbed? It feels like all these mundane things you do inch you towards a milestone, and when it finally arrives you don’t really feel it, or you keep asking yourself: “Is there anything else left?” Left before starting the track work that is.
Moving at a snails pace, or more precisely at the pace the caulk dries, I finally completed laying the cork sheets down across the entire Staging deck. This took about a week, as I worked in stages, couple of hours each day after work, and letting it dry overnight.
Everyone should be aware by now that laying track directly on top of Extruded (XPS) Foam creates a “drum effect”. Over at the Model Railroad Hobbyist forum there had been some great threads (Foam Drum, Foam Drum II) about this issue, some good science behind it, and possible solutions to minimizing the effect.
