Cork roadbed help


A2TwrOpr

A2TwrOpr

Member
Good morning guys. I've been thinking about my layout build and losing sleep (literally) over this one. Does anyone make beveled cork road for going from the cork down to the plywood base (bench work)? I read that you can go from the cork to the plywood without any type of support. Just back fill the area with lots of ballast and go. That doesn't seem very stable to me though. What have you done to get around this problem?
 
I'm not aware of any. You could use some cedar shims used in construction. What I did to bring the track to the level of the plywood was to use a router. I used Homabed which has the same contours as cork. I dropped the router bit to depth of the road bed at about 15 inches from where the height change would start and gradually decreased the depth along the 15 inch length until almost nothing was being removed from th eplywood. The road bed was then laid in the trench routed out and the transition was done. I did this on all industrial sidings and in yard areas.

In the first picture you can see the siding dropping from the level of the roadbed to the surface to the right. In the second picture you can barely make out the switcher dropping down in front of the freight station. It was a bit of a mess but worked great. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures on this computer showing the transition that isn't covered with ballast.

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I've always used shimming shingles, which are the cedar shims as mentioned above. They usually come in a pack, and are pretty cheap. Just cut the thick end off at the height of the cork, lay it down, glue it, or nail it, and lay your track on it. Works like a charm. The only time it won't work as well is if your transition involves a curve. You can still use them, but you will have to make pie cuts or kerfs to bend the shim. Any hardware store, lumber yard, or home improvement store will have them.
 
I cut the plywood that the track is transitioning to so it creates a sort of finger of wood then bend it up to meet the level of the cork. Usually cutting the plywood about two car lengths will give you a nice transition so your couplers don't separate. The other method is to shim up the underlayment of the area you are transitioning to so it is the same level as the cork roadbed. There will be no visible drop down.
 
Thanks for the advice guys. I like the idea of using shims, so I'll probably go that route. I want to have the spur tracks drop down off the mainline like they do in real life. For my yard, the plan is to use cord pad so it's all level.
 
That is very prototypical. If you look at any industrial sidings, most of them are dropped down from the height of the mainline to "ground" level". A lot of passing sidings also drop to ground level as I see along the MRL and BNSF track in my area. Also, you'll find that by dropping the track to ground level, loading docks will be at the proper height for freight cars.
 
Montanan, you make a good point which is exactly my line of thought. One of my pet peeves is not having the loading docks even with the track height. And I don't want to put the buildings on cork because it would defeat the purpose of having the tracks on the cork roadbed
 
You're right there. I really didn't want to have to raise the buildings to meet the track and as I mentioned before, prototype railroads do drop any siding and industrial tracks down. I personally think it looks a lot better and well worth the work. Looking forward to seeing your build.
 
Here's a trick I used in the "olden days" and will use in the future. Take an old deck of cards and spread a 1/4 of the deck or so to make up the difference in level. You might throw in a staple or two or some glue. Once it's ballasted it won't move, that's for sure.
 
When I needed to take down cork roadbed I used this tool. It will take a little elbow grease but will take it down at what ever plain your looking for.

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Thanks for all the replies! You guys sure have a lot of tricks up your sleeves. I was stumped with this one lol!
Number9, yards and spur tracks are made at ground level like Montanan said. Some yards are actually even protected with a derail as well.
 
Here's a picture at the entrance to one of the yards. The Milwaukee switcher is about half was down the transition from roadbed height to the surface. Unfortunately the depth of field isn't good with this picture, but maybe you can make out the tracks behind the switcher dropping down to the surface level.

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Have you had any issues with the switch being on the decline like that? I was thinking of doing the same with my ladder tracks for the yard when I get to that stage.
 
A2TwrOpr said:
Have you had any issues with the switch being on the decline like that? I was thinking of doing the same with my ladder tracks for the yard when I get to that stage.
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I was careful not to have the points of a turnout where the transition from the flat area of the roadbed to the downgrade to the yard. I also made sure that the transition was gradual so pilots and couplers wouldn't catch on anything. No problems after 20+ years of use.
 
I cut my entire road bed out of 2' x 3' x 1/4" cork sheets using router. I do have few transitions - see in the middle, basically you first set router to cut 1/8" and lower one half of your transition, then set it to 1/16" and cut two quarters, then set to 1/32" and do 4 eights'. You'll end up to 1/32" steps. Then I used sander to go over transition one or two times to smooth it out.

http://www.modelrailroadforums.com/...ck-bed-using-cork-sheets-and-router&highlight=
 

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