Sticking things down

[Bigfish]

Well only a mere 12 months or so since I first posted a request for help with a "P4 plank" I've actually made one, 12"x66" (ie fits across end of workshop) using "Barry Norman beams" and a 6mm ply top. It's a bit over-engineered but I learned a lot. I've produced a plan using Templot (thanks Martin what a wondrous piece of software) - 3 B6s and some "flowing" trackwork. I've spent a pleasant day or two making a "rail & turnout building checklist", ready to start making some track. Being a somewhat punctilious (I love that word) chap, I've written down every possible step in detail, in the hope of avoiding some calamities at least. It's quite a long list.

May I ask for your advice on a seemingly straightforward matter? I need to stick my 3mm cork underlay to the baseboard top, then stick the Templot sheets to the cork, then stick the ply sleepers to the Templot sheets. Is the answer "PVA" in all cases, or could I do better? I particularly don't want my Templot pattern to go wrinkly after I've gone to the trouble of calibrating my printer etc.
Cheers
Alan

[Tim V]

I used cork tiles from the DIY shop - ready flattened and sanded and used cork tile adhesive!

I thought it wasn't good practice to leave the templates on the layout?

Anyway, I'd build trackwork on the templates on the workbench, and transfer completed track to the layout - once built. I'd use tape to hold the templates down, and double sided tape to position sleepers.

[Bigfish]

Thanks Tim, that's very helpful. So when you've built the track "off baseboard" as it were, would you just PVA the track outline where the track's going to go, and then press the complete track unit down until the glue's gone off?
Alan

[allanferguson]

Speaking as someone whose efforts have not been noticeably brilliant at the interface between track and baseboard.....! I would comment that PVA sets rigid, and using a rigid glue to fix down a flexible underlay does not seem sensible to me. Also your carefully preserved Templot templates will certainly wrinkle in the presence of PVA, it being water based. Copydex has been used, and is effective, but there is a danger that if you need to drill holes through it, it may peel off round your drill, leaving your underlay disconnected from the baseboard. I have used a spray adhesive as sold for carpets; it remains flexible, but you've got to be fairly quick before it goes off, and once it goes off you won't get it off again. Also you have to beware of the fumes. Photomount or other types of spray adhesives for photographs will work in the same way, but tend to be more expensive. I would comment that I prefer to build the track off the baseboard, so that a "dry run" is possible.

Good luck with your project -- It's very satisfying to see your locos trundling along your own bit of track.

Allan F

[Tim V]

Thanks Tim, that's very helpful. So when you've built the track "off baseboard" as it were, would you just PVA the track outline where the track's going to go, and then press the complete track unit down until the glue's gone off?
Alan

Depends what the sleepers are made of.

If plywood, then yes, but if plastic, no. I'd use UHU for flexi track for example.

[Russ Elliott]

Alan - if your cork sheet is currently in a roll, unroll it, re-roll it the other way, leave it for a bit, then unroll again - the objective being to make the sheet as flat as possible before sticking to baseboard top. (Or keep it under a carpet for a week.)

A thin layer of PVA for baseboard top to cork underside is fine: roll it if you can when laying, and weight it (books, mags are good) until dry. Lightly sand to remove any bumps.

I'm with Tim V about templates - track is best built offboard and transferred over, preferably off their templates. I use dolly pins for positioning. I find PVA ok for flexi on top of cork, but the grip isn't fierce, but I also ballast at the same time as track laying, which helps secure the setting.

[martin goodall]

NOT PVA! Definitely not PVA.

As someone has already pointed out, it sets rock-hard, and guarantees that gear noise from the locos will be transmitted and amplified through the baseboard. If you want your engines all to sound like demented coffee grinders - use PVA for sticking everything down.

Even better - ballast your track with genuine granite chips - definitely the noisiest model railway ballast ever devised by man. If the granite ballast is also stuck down with PVA, a true cacophony can be guaranteed.

To avoid this, use something like Evostik impact adhesive (which willl remain flexible, and so won't transmit noise very effectively) to stick down the underlay and to stick the track to the undelay, and use ground cork for ballast, or some other non-mineral substitute. (Any stone-based ballast will be noisy.) Cork ballast can be stuck to the underlay with a latex-based adhesive, such as Copydex.

[beachboy]

I would agree with Martin. I glued cork & track onto a ply surface board with PVA, and the base board become one large sound box.
Also covered a large Wargamming board with PVA & artificial stonechips, which looked good until it was picked up, & half of the stonechips fell off. Despite tamping them down as I went.
As PVA dries as hard as stone, unless one is very carefull to ensure the excess glue is squeezed out from under the cork, rock hard lumps will remain.
Last effort was with Cork & Vinyl Adhessive ( Latex ) on MDF Base, which is an inert board, but needs protecting with varnish. Turning upside down, and nothing falls off. I can pack in enough glue for full depth sleepers; & sets with no resonating properties. Keep the lid on the tub, & work on a track panel at a time, as its working time is 30 - 40 mins. But that helps with any unexpected change of plans. It also has a flex quality, which may equal a future salvage value. Whereas PVA requires a chisel.
For glueing paper drawings to the base, I would use an artist spray mount, as there is no high liquid value to stretch the paper. Panel at a time, if poss.

Regards, Steve.

[Bigfish]

Thanks everybody for your replies, and especially for once again confirming my suspicion that there is No Right Answer To Anything in P4!!

I suppose as this is a "P4 plank" built with the express purpose of trying things out, I could do exactly that, and do half of it with PVA and half with Evostick etc. But I'm not sure I can be that radical; I've had to stop myself constructing a mini-plank in order to try things out before I make a mess of the P4 Plank ......

Russ, thanks for the link to Somersham. It's particularly interesting to see something in mid-mess as it were, and then how nice it looks when done. Your wiring was so lovely it seems wrong to hide it under the baseboard; I shall keep it in mind as the model for how to keep wiring under control.

Alan

[Chris Mitton]

Hi all

Re PVA - I'm sometimes mystified why we spend enormous amounts of time, effort and skill giving our locos and stock full springing and then run them on a trackbed with all the resilience of reinforced concrete! Surely the track should have some (vertical) resilience as well, as it does on the prototype, so that its springiness complements the springiness of the trains?

Why isn't it a good idea to lay the track permanently on the templates? It seems to me that if you've designed the entire layout with Templot, beautiful flowing curves, accurate bespoke S&Cs, etc etc - as a number of people (me included!) seem to have managed - then every transposition onto the baseboard proper introduces potential errors and misalignments , so why not simply stick the entire plan down and build on that? Maybe, when my current order of Round Tuits is delivered , I'll describe my own track construction thinking in my workbench thread, and you can all tell me I'm brilliant / insane / amend to taste......

Nice to see Somersham - inspiration because a different Somersham (in Cambridgeshire) is (was!) on the GN&GE Joint and less than a million miles from the supposed location of Stowe Fen, when I get far enough with it to run trains!

Regards
Chris

[Bigfish]

Hi Chris, I was only thinking of you yesterday as I leafed through a pile of Evergreen square tubes and my notes on your DIY TOUs! Thanks for injecting further controversy into my "seemingly straightforward" request with your indisputable logic !
Things get even worse if you check out Howard's post (aka The Master) http://www.scalefour.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=78&t=1342 where he appears to PVA glue the sleepers direct to the baseboard, no Templot underneath, and no rails attached to them... He did tell me not to make any track like that until I knew what I was doing, to be fair. Can't argue with a man who makes functional scale point rodding.....
Regards
Alan

[Russ Elliott]

I accept, to a degree, the PVA versus rubbery glue stuff argument, when it comes to noise. To be honest, I'm not sure I can tell much difference in noise level between the two. Tom Harland's Bramblewick track is sunk into a Cascamite mix (which really is rock solid, far more so than PVA), and I never noticed an undue amount of noise from that layout. For me, I prefer PVA because it doesn't distintegrate after 20 years like Evostick does, although maybe the modern formulation is better lasting. Moreover, using rubbery stuff between track and trackbed is not suited to my preferred method of ballasting, and cutting troughs or point stool apertures or drilling holes (droppers etc) is a complete pain with the rubbery stuff, because all it wants to do is stick to itself. In my view, the primary factor in cutting down the transmission of noise is the trackbed itself rather than the adhesive either side of it. I do avoid granite ballast though - horrible stuff!

If locos sound like demented coffee grinders, I would suggest investigation of the dementia rather than the medium the grinding sound is being transmitted through. Spring suspensions do seem to help enormously when helping to decouple sound transmission.

All that said, I'm not too worried about a certain amount of sound.

On the question of transferring Templot paper bases to trackbeds, Chris, I don't think anyone is against that, all that has been recommended is building the track offboard. If templates do come over with their track though, one needs to address how they will follow trackbed contours (ballast bevelled edges, pits, ballast levels set at deliberately different levels, etc). There is also the matter of fitting droppers and drilling their trackbed holes to be considered, and fitting stretcher bars and blade droppers - all much easier in my view if there is no template stuck to the track underside.

[Tim V]

NOT PVA! Definitely not PVA.

As someone has already pointed out, it sets rock-hard, and guarantees that gear noise from the locos will be transmitted and amplified through the baseboard. If you want your engines all to sound like demented coffee grinders - use PVA for sticking everything down.

I'm a bit concerned about this Martin. My layout has the ballast stuck down with PVA, and I don't notice any coffee grinders on it. As Russ says, look to your engines. The mixture of plastic and brass gears in High Level gearboxes produces a quiet drive, and I've not noticed the Bachman conversions as being noisy.

[Jol Wilkinson]

Motor/gear noise is only part of the problem, as noise is also generated by wheels running on the track.

While doing the new trackwork for London Road I found that running a carriage along on track that was not secured was quiet, but that the noise level increased noticeably on glued track. That was using carpet glue (Styccobond F3) with 3mm C&L foam underlay and before ballasting. Clearly the fixed track was transmitting noise through the foam into the baseboard top. How it would be with PVA I don't know, but guess that it would be at least the same and probably worse.

I still think that a "flexible" glue for track and ballast is the better option, but that for the quietest results you would need a totally inert baseboard that absorbs, rather than reflects or amplifies noise transmitted into it.

Jol

[Philip Hall]

Perhaps it's not practical for P4, because of our very fine flanges, but on the two occasions I visited the late Ken Northwood's 'North Devonshire' I noticed that the running was very quiet. I believe that this was a result of Ken's practice of a foam roadbed, with the track secured to a paper 'top' which itself was just laid on top of the foam, and (I think) spot glued to that to prevent undue movement. Certainly it permitted some vertical movement of the track, and the click of wheels at rail joints was readily audible. I think Iain Rice expanded on Ken's methods in his finescale track book many years ago.

I have always preferred (for speed of working reasons) to lay track and ballast at the same time, and have successfully used Copydex, which stays flexible. Yes I know it's a pain when you have to drill holes, but I can live with that. However, an EM layout I visited many times had the track lightly glued down with watered down PVA brushed here and there over pinned trackwork on a cork underlay; the pins were subsequently removed and ballast laid in place and thinned PVA dropped on. This too remained relatively quiet, so maybe it's down to not gluing the sleepers down too rigidly and allowing the ballast to just sit there with a light fixative?

Philip

[Chris Mitton]

Hi Chris, I was only thinking of you yesterday as I leafed through a pile of Evergreen square tubes and my notes on your DIY TOUs!
Regards
Alan

Hi Alan - likewise I've been meaning to PM you to see how you got on with them - or ?
Regards
Chris

[allanferguson]

I laid track on 6mm foam (camping mat), the whole secured with spray carpet adhesive. For a while there were some sections of track laid but not secured atall, apart from a few pins for location. It was very noticeable how much quieter trains were on these sections. I would rather agree that a baseboard which absorbs vibration and does not resonate is the answer for really quiet running. Lead baseboards? A very quiet layout I've seen was laid on rigid foam about 4" thick with no underlay.

I would comment that the noise question is virtually irrelevant for exhibition layouts; I don't think I've ever been able to hear a layout at a show. At home other considerations apply, of course.

Allan F

[Will L]

I think focusing on the glue quite misses the point. Noisy track is caused by the baseboard acting like a sound box and is most associated with thin baseboard tops. I had a layout with a 1/2 inch chipboard top on a 1ft centres grid of 2 by 1. Even with PVA glued granite basalt it didn't rumble, but it wasn't light. As Jol has pointed out the only sure way to avoid rumble is not to glue the track down at all but trying to maintain P4 track geometry standards with floating track is a nightmare I for one wouldn't relish. What you glue it down with hardly matters, there shouldn't be enough glue between track and sub base for the physical characteristics of the glue on mass to have any relevance.

By the way PVA on mass isn't rock hard, as anybody with a old bottle of Resin W will find out. Its fairly resilient soapy solid which is hard to brake because it stretches and distorts if you try. PVC fixed granite it pretty solid, but that's the qualities of the granite shining through. Stick down the softer (Cork based?) ballast available now with PVA and you get something altogether softer and more pliable. For most uses except wood work and fixing glassing, PVA is best used watered down. It goes on working at quite surprising dilutions though it doesn't have much "grab" in that form.

Will

[grovenor-2685]

I now use the PVA sold in Early Learning Centres and similar places for the kids to play with, its cheaper and is designed to wash out of the kids clothes, which helps a lot if you change your mind and need to do some relaying. I find that squeezing a bead out of the bottle and using a wet brush to spread it out into an even layer gives enough dilution.
Refer http://www.norgrove.me.uk/shed-relay.html
Regards
Keith

[Bigfish]

Keith, many thanks for that most interesting and informative link, and for the info on PVA.
Alan

[JFS]

Alan,

Since my name got mentioned, I thought I ought to chip in! Firstly, I used to use Copydex for all the reasons others have mentioned, but, to be truthful, I think the noise aspect is much less of an issue with "modern" motor / gearboxes than it was in days of yore. As you know, my trackwork is "concreted" down to a thin baseboard with 1.6mm depth of ballast with industrial strength PVA and I don't consider it excessively noisy - but that might be more to do with my rolling stock than my track!

Just a couple of points about PVA - firstly, don't get it anywhere near bare MDF (except possibly the green water-proof grade) it will cause it to swell, wrinkle and go all over the show. I used MDF for my baseboards and had no issues but that is only because I learned from the disasters of others!

Secondly, there are many and manifold types, grades and sorts of "PVA" - my way of ballasting for example ONLY works with "external" grades of PVA - the washable grade which Keith mentioned plus "ordinary" grade all behaved quite differently.

As I mentioned in our private exchange, the whole business of sticking Templates permanently to a baseboard is fraught with potential disasters and I only narrowly avoided a couple of them! No one seems to have said too much about this so I am guessing that there is not yet much experience out there.

One final point - we should all of us avoid being too dogmatic about "what is best" - it depends on what you are doing. If I were building a "Stoke Summit" type layout (which I would not), I too would build the odd few bits of pointwork on the bench then stick everything down and ballast in one go. However, that is not the nature of my current layout, and for complex pointwork - be it at Minories or at Birmingham New Street - it not quite so simple. So horses, as ever, for courses and for me, "build in situ" was right for this situation. It also worked for Jim S-W and his layout is no country branch line either!

I have to say that my latest track is FAR more accurate than anything I have built before - but is that because of the method or just because I learnt from previous cock-ups? Also, as you quote above, it is perhaps a route for experienced hands only - practice on "The Plank" first!


Best wishes,

Howard.

[Bigfish]

Many thanks for that Howard. I have a DVD somewhere of Barry Norman extolling the virtues of "Febond" which is probably the sort of stuff you had in mind? - I think builders use it to stick modern houses together. The fact that no two respondents ever seem to agree on the answer to any of my noddy questions is part of what makes it such fun, isn't it?
Cheers
Alan

[Terry Bendall]

I have been a bit busy this week, so this is a late contribution to this thread.

I have always used PVA glue to stick down track and have never had any problems. I have also used granite ballast, but that sold for 2mm scale which to my mind looks better than the stuff sold for 4mm scale, and this is put in place dry after the track has been wired up and tested and glued in place with the traditional dilute PVA with a drop of washing up liquid added to reduce the surface tension and which is applied with an eye dropper. Yes there is some noise, but as Alan F pointed out if there is any noise, it is not heard at exhibitions, but it might be a problem at home.

On Brighton Road we used 10mm camping map as an underlay. Barry Luck's view, as the person who looks after the layout and has done much to get it running succesfully, is that he would never use it again. We have had a lot of trouble at baseboard joints with alignment, both horizontally and vertically and in the end resorted to 1mm brass wire passing through the underlay and glued into holes drilled in the 12mm ply baseboard top then cut off level with the underside of the rail, which is then soldered to the wire. Any sort of soldered fixing at the baseboard joints has the potential to cause problems if the brass expands, but is held ridgedly at both ends.

The fact that no two respondents ever seem to agree on the answer to any of my noddy questions is part of what makes it such fun, isn't it?

I think the answer is that usually there are several ways of doing any particular job and people use what works for them.

we should all of us avoid being too dogmatic about "what is best"

My sentiments exactly.

Terry Bendall

[Armchair Modeller]

I can't help thinking that it would be much more reliable if everything was stuck down as solidly as possible - and simply buying a set of earmuffs if the resulting noise offends.

[Bigfish]

I think the marvellous thing is that so many of you are willing to take the time and make the effort to share your hard-won experience so generously, so that beginners like me can avoid making at least some of the same mistakes. It's very much appreciated
Alan