Laying track

[Graham Hoffman]

We're ready to lay track on a 7% mountain grade on our club layout. The grade is made of Woodland Scenics foam incline sets overlayed with plaster cloth. We're thinking of either fastening the track with Liquid Nails or just relying on the bonded ballast to hold it down. Any tips or advice on a better method would be appreciated.

Thanks.
Graham
Mullet River & Southern Railway

 

[Arlaghan]

Are you using roadbed? What I do is glue cork roadbed down with liquid nails - good strong stuff, holds it's place. Then, using white glue and lots of pins, I glue the track onto the cork. It holds just fine, but should you need to adjust some stuff, you can pull the track off (sand the bumps made from the glue) and start again - all without damage to the roadbed.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[railwaybob]

While liquid nails or LePage's "No-More-Nails" really holds things in place, you might find that you've really got to move to get your track down before the glue sets.

I used No-More-Nails and I was really hopping to get the track all aligned before the glue set. I had visions of a real mess of trackwork. If you make a mistake, you'll need a jackhammer to fix things.

On my last couple of pieces, a friend of mine used carpenter's glue, took his time to align the track and even the ties so that they looked really good. By the next day, the glue was dry and I could remove the straight pins he used to keep things aligned.

 

[Jaws]

Something I have found, over many years to be very reliable, (recently successfully used on foam) uses exterior latex house paint with flextrack.
The method holds well but may be pried loose with good results--better than glue.

(ALWAYS WASH RAILS and TURNOUTS WITH 409 or SIMILAR, DRYING THOROUGHLY BEFORE STARTING PAINT.)

Use pencil or similar to outline route and paint between lines.

Ahead of time, I use boxcar red on the rails and when set, dry brush grey over the rails and ties.

Place roadbed over freshly painted surface (I use paint near the color of the earth surroundings) and hold with pushpins until dry --- give it an hour or so.

Paint your roadbed as nearly as possible to the color of the ballast you will use. While paint is wet, lay your pre-painted track, holding temporarily with push pins.

I ballast most of my mainline in the conventional manner (wet water and 50/50 glue after the paint has set) and after rubbing the rail tops clean with a dry cloth.

An exception is made on turnouts for which I use a slightly different method to prevent later problems.

 

[Graham Hoffman]

Thanks for the tips, fellas. We'll get at it today and I'll let you know how it turns out.