Realising a Dream - 20 - Laying the Track

Before starting this stage, please note, if you pre-wire your track do it as you progress, I wire my track after it is laid but before painting and ballasting. Any point motor holes must be pre-drilled before the points are fixed in place, Mercontrol wires are attached to the point ties when the points are loosely pinned just prior to being fully pinned down.

Underlay

Quiet running without the drumming effect on the plywood base boards was desirable. I considered both cork and 3mm thick closed cell foam, using them just to raise the track above the baseboard but considered that a sufficient ballast shoulder would be created without raising the track above the board.

Cork is coarsely granular and can absorb diluted glue into it and become hard and so lose its sound deadening ability, closed cell foam is impervious, so I decided to use the foam.

The foam was bought from a plastics materials supplier in sheets (Ref 20.1), it is sold as insulation material and can be bought in various thicknesses, but limited colours. A pack of white and pack of black (charcoal) were bought both 3mm thick. Local DIY stores can probably supply smaller quantities more cost effectively.

I covered the scenic area baseboards entirely with the foam sheet and glued it in position with dabs of neat PVA. You do not need much PVA because the foam surface has a high coefficient of friction, i.e. it does not slide easily, also there needs to be airspace around the PVA to allow it to set by evaporation of the water content.

An area fully covered with PVA will take a long time to dry when the PVA is sandwiched between the plywood and foam, it is also quite unnecessary as the PVA is pretty tough stuff when set so little is required.

Non-scenic areas were only covered sufficiently for track laying.

The 3mm closed cell foam is also a good base for scenic coverings, it forms contours well, takes emulsion paint easily which is then followed by ballast, powders or flock grass. It also provides a convenient covering for GEM Mercontrol tubing which is run between the plywood and the foam, I will expand upon this in the next article of this series which looks at point control.

Layout planning was much enhanced when I bought AnyRail 5 (Ref 20.2) a very useful and cost effective CAD tool, you only need to avoid buying a few points you do not need to pay for it. Certainly makes smooth and progressive curving of flexible track much easier.

Some areas particularly with multiple points were printed out on paper full size from AnyRail and laid on the foam. As the track was pinned the paper printout was progressively torn away in sections.





Fixing

All track was lightly pinned down with Peco track pins, I prefer to drill through sleepers and partly into the plywood surface with a 0.6mm drill and then push the track pins in by hand with a nail punch. Using a hammer risks rail damage even with a punch, dented track can only be lifted away and replaced.

Without any drilling it is hard to put the nail through the plastic of the sleeper and when you do the sleeper becomes distorted. Marine plywood boards are a very stable material to use for baseboard construction but it is quite hard and nails would just bend if hammered fully in, well, they do if try.

Also the foam is easily compressed so pushing the pin in with a punch by hand means you can just nip the sleeper into position, push too hard and the sleeper deforms and looks unsightly, i.e. bent. Worse if it is part of a point you could upset the alignment of blades, moving tie or vees which results in malfunction or poor electrical contact for the loco due to uneven rail heights. This must be right before ballasting.

How often to pin? It depends, later on the glue impregnated ballasting will fix the track in place solidly, on scenic sections I would pin less often than in non-scenic sections. Maybe near each end of a length and approximately every 8 inches (200mm) on straight track. On curves the tighter the bend the more often you pin it to keep it in place.

When bending flexible track to a curve I gently ease it roughly to shape and straighten any twisted sleepers before offering it up to the previously laid section. I would also ensure by trimming the end of the rails that both rails are in line with each other once pinned down. If possible avoid placing fishplates on a curve as they do not curve and results in a kink in the flow of the curve. My eye is quite keen when it comes to flowing curves. If the curve is long and requires a join keep the joints away from the apex of a progressive curve.

Having cut the rails, for which I prefer to use Xuron cutters, remove the burrs for which I find a triangular section needle file to be ideal and gently chamfer the corners, it makes fitting the fishplates so much easier, metal or plastic.

A word of warning here, which applies to DC, AC and especially DCC, do not rely on metal fishplates for electrical continuity, I have fitted a few hundred mostly new and they are often a loose fit, or only just grip. As they age they will loosen further still. Any gaps will also allow rail paint or weathering materials in to make matters worse. Finding the faults on a scenically complete railway is difficult, soul destroying and inevitably requires making good afterwards, just like real life ground works.

Every modeller has a personal opinion, my golden rule is never rely on them for long term electrical continuity only use them for mechanical alignment of rails. Connect every section of rail to a power bus by a soldered joint. A poor intermittent contact joint will be very difficult to find until it fails completely. During that time it spoils the fun the railway was built for, and as you grow older repairs become increasingly difficult to access, see, and apply. I will discuss this further when I move on to wiring in a future article.

The next images show early stages of laying the sorting sidings of the marshalling yard, white foam used where grey mixed blend ballast was to be applied for the mainline and charcoal where cinders was to be applied in the yard. Medium sized ballast was used, maybe a little chunky for OO but the fine was far too fine IMO.

Wagons were used to check siding spacing, note they are close together, only sorting, marking up, coupling and un-coupling is performed, no loading or unloading.

Full size printouts of the pointwork placement ensured everything lined up as planned.

Siding spacing and straightness was maintained using a one metre rule that was just the right width and I worked towards the wall from the 'operators' edge, everywhere else I work towards the 'operators' edge.





Where track lengths join the sleepers were cut away before pinning down, once all was laid pairs of sleepers were cut, the chair parts which grip the rail cut off and then the sleeper pairs for joining plain track (or singles for joining to points) were slid under the rail fishplates. The missing parts are barely visible once painted.

At this stage the points and adjacent track pins are loosely pinned so that the points may be lifted slightly to connect Mercontrol wire to the centre of the blade ties prior to painting and ballasting.



That completes my initial stage of laying track.


References:

20.1 Low Density 33kg Foam Sheet (Polyethylene) 2m x 1m x 3mm

Available in black or white in packs of 15 sheets

Supplier: theplasticshop.co.uk
https://www.theplasticshop.co.uk/LD33-33kg-foam-sheet.html?ssp=ld

This material has also been very useful for lining rolling stock trays, making covers for the Peco SL-43 Loco Lift and landscaping embankments.

20.2 AnyRail
Railway layout CAD tool for Microsoft Windows 7 upwards.

Supplier: https://www.anyrail.com


Next, point control.

Discussion always

Jim

Index of Articles with Links

 

Hi Echidna.

Thank you for your informative input, looks like I need to make a correction to the surfaces between the sorting roads as I laid normal track ballast there since those photos were taken, available ballasts, used with HO or OO track seem to be too chunky or too fine, I opted for the too chunky as laying the fine can be very difficult especially over the expanse of track I have there.



I thought afterwards it looked too chunky to be suitable for workers to walk over even though in my yard shunting staff would not be trying to stop wagons with poles applied to the brake levers of moving wagons. Leaving the foam bare was not really an alternative as the sheets did vary in colour somewhat not being designed to be visible in typical real life construction work.

Fine ballast material has been laid around the loco services area for walking areas, so perhaps the best way forward is to either add a layer of fine cinder coloured ballast on top of the the existing normal ballast to smooth it out, i.e. treating the normal ballast as a foundation layer, or replace the normal ballast material between the tracks with strips of this foam, the former the most likely.

But, to clarify, would the tracks in the yard in BR steam days have been laid on the fine ballast too, not just the space between them ?

The marshalling yard was 'completed' and operational 4 years ago, however there is always more detail that can be added as I consider that most of what I do at this time is a first pass in the hope of actually completing the first pass, then a second to refine it.

This yard is the subject of a separate series of articles which I am preparing (to start posting shortly), describing its purpose, operation and ancillary services. I would certainly welcome your input on that series too.

Regards Jim

 

Thank you Echidna.

Fascinating, this is the sort of detail that is nigh impossible to find without professional knowledge.
I really appreciate you spending the time to explain this to us.


Jim