Roadbed choice

Before starting with the medium layout I have featured on this site, I experimented with HO scale for about a year. I had used cork roadbed for that layout. That worked fine, but I really didn’t like working with the cork and I hated how noisy it was.

For the N scale project, I decided to go with the Woodland Scenics foam roadbed. It is very easy to work with. I simply glued it down to the plywood using Elmer’s white glue and held it in place for a few seconds. It goes down much faster than cork and is a lot quieter.

Here’s the medium layout with the initial foam roadbed down.

Now, the downside with the WS stuff is it is black. So, if you ballast your track without first painting it, the black roadbed becomes very unforgiving. Here are a few pictures of the same layout at a later stage. As you can see, the nasty black color comes through even at a tiny opening in the ballast.

With my second layout, which I so far have been calling “the small layout”, I also used the same roadbed, but I painted it before laying down the track.  I haven’t started the trackwork on that layout yet, but I’m hoping the painted roadbed would end up being more forgiving of any mistakes in ballasting.

Here are two pictures of that layout; before and after the roadbed was painted.

I’ll post pictures of the ballasted track from the small layout when that’s done.

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