With the new baseboards soon to be built for our US layout, and after reading lots of members threads from the start of building thier layouts, and watching Waynes threads, at the same time looking at a lot of US based layouts, they all seem to build on top of foam, we have always covered ours with cork.

What do you all feel about this should we use foam as well

 

Alan it depends on what you have in mind,ie- do you want typo american
style or just american type  ? if you want it like Wayne then foam
if you are just running their stock then stick with what you know works for you.
does this make sense to you?

lol::lol::lol::cool:

Owen

Yes it does make sense, but I have often wondered why they use foam.

Think I will ask them :pedal

Flak jacket time for me again . . . I use Midwest cork because it splits in two and reverses to make chamfered sides.  I don't care about the noise.  Trains are noisey!  The more noise, the better for me . . . "the colours . . . the colours"

Alan  If you're not planning on spectacular scenery [such as in a yard area] you could start with a uniformly flat foam base which can easily be excavated to bench level to get a certain amout of low-lying land. To my mind that's the real advantage of starting with a thick foam base.
 
 Mike

Alan,
I can tell you why I went with the foam. I wanted the layout to be more prototypical in that all my life is seems that every time I was around a railroad track, it was above me. When I used to walk along the tracks, (did it a lot), if I left them I always went down, not up or even level, always down.

When I look at the layouts from your side of this globe, they just looked too flat to me. No depth to them.

It has nothing to do with the running / shunting / playing with trains, only the aesthetic looks of the layout. Without the foam I would be limited to the top of the baseboards, now I have another 1 1/2" to work with. In HO Scale that is just about eleven feet below the track bed.

You might want to keep another thing in mind. this country (USA) is quite large and what I remember as a kid watching trains, is not at train stations or terminal yards, but out in the open country, for hundreds (even thousands) of miles of track, through all kinds of terrain, like mountains, hills, valleys, deserts, across flat lands, & corn fields. I guess maybe that is why I want my eleven feet!

Wayne

Mike, Wayne

Thanks both of you for your replies, from most of the photos that I can find showing a smallish yard, such as our track plans, the ground level looks really flat, but I fancy trying some uneven ground, but with the baseboard only being 1' deep , 70/80 feet in scale, I feel that this might look wrong.

But I can see all the advantages of using a deep foam base, and on both of your layouts it really works.

I've laid my track on a cork bed, but only the actual permanent way is cork, the rest is bare baseboard. This does restrict the representation of "below track level" features, especially where there is no track incline. I had thought that a better way may be an "all over" covering of cork, with a second cork layer for the trackbed, but now I'd seriously consider the foam. A couple of layers, like Wayne, if the terrain was to have a lot of variation, or a single (perhaps thinner) layer if the terrain was to be fairly even. 

This has certainly given me food for thought with my proposed N gauge layout particularly as the scenic side is of great importance to me (I'm thinking that 2" (50mm) foam would give me probably enough headroom to take trains underneath the top level?) and would represent 25 feet.:cool:

Ken

When you are working on a smaller size layout, perhaps only one layer of say 3/4" to 1" of foam would do the trick. When you do not have a lot of depth to the layout (front to back) it may not look right to go as deep (below the track) either.

Just a thought.

Wayne

Wayne

That is what has been worrying me, So I think that we might try to cover the complete baseboard with around 3/4'' of foam, which will allow us to lower the level of the ground if we see fit.

Hmmm……….what about electric point operation?  If the point/turnout is 1 - 1.5" above the 'hard' base, how do you get on, apart from the extended pin motors. The pins on the SEEP ones are about 1 3/4" long…

Or, have I gone off half-cocked?

You may well be correct there, Doug. The Peco catalogue is no help either, stating that there is an "extended pin" version of the point motor, but failing to mention how long the pin is :exclam

I know Perry has used a few of the longer pin version, so he may be able to give us some idea. Apart from that, it may be necessary to make some sort of extension to the pin. Didn't you do that Perry :question 

You can always mount the peco points directly under the point itself not actually under the baseboard i have been doing it that way on my present layout extension

This seems to aid the point motor as the motor is in very close contact with the point

whereas if it is under the baseboard totally you have to have a longer activating pin which bends more the longer it is which makes for poorer operation.

cheers Brian

Brian

Are you saying that you cut out a hole large enough for the whole point motor to sit in, if so how do you mount it, and also cover it from above.

Alan, this is the way I mount all my Peco point motors. They clip under the point using the slots already in the Peco points and the lugs already on the motors. You can see a good photographic diagram of this in the peco catalogue. You then cut a rectangular hole in the baseboard (or the foam covering) at the appropriate place and they just drop into the hole. I use 4 x thin pieces of plain plasticard to cover the holes, sliding each piece under the point and tight to the 4 sides of the motor. That seems to do the trick. If you are still unclear, let me know and I'll do a mock up over the weekend and take some photos of the stages involved.

I just had a measure up and found that the extension pin measurment from where you would fix the base to the underside of the boards to the top of the extension pin is 30 mm. i suppose there is nothing to stop you adding a further pin ? the actual pin inc a small ferral to join with is about 27 mm .

i should have said to allow for the top of the pin to engage with the point tie bar . about 2 or 3 mm.

i driiled out 10mm holes centre of the tie bar hole to allow movement though the travel of the pin and then covered this with a small piece of card to stop ballast falling through.

Alan

exactly as Jeff has said the point motor fits directly to the point using the slots moulded in the point you can even use hornby point motors aswell with a little bit of surgery.

You cut out a slot big enough for the motor directly under where the point motor is going and as jeff said you use thin plastcard or something similar to cover the hole.

If you still are unsure of what we mean say so and i will try and photo some of mine for you

Cheers brian