Greg, don't you just love to ballast! LOL I see you put down your grass or dirt first, I think it looks a lot better than putting it down afterword's! I think will give that a try when I get to that point on my new layout I am planning. Things are really coming together on your layout!
I do have a question, how do you secure your track to the foam board?
Greg - I don't mean to pick on you - but got to wondering about laying down foam as a base layer. Instead of adding roadbed, why not just carve out the foam to give the right slope and drainage channel? and forget the roadbed. Most track around me have a pretty decent slope into a drainage area which roadbed does not mimic. I would not consider it if on plywood, but foam is a different story. Anyone modeled that?
Regarding the foam. I have not put down 2 inch foam. I have put down 1/2 or 1 inch over plywood with the thought it would help quiet down the noise. No difference using the foam or right on top of the ply. The ply turned into a drum and vibrated regardless of what was on top, even homasote. Had a dB meter to check since I did not trust my ears. When I had to crawl on top of the rails, I set a 2x2 foot piece of 2 inch foam on the deck and climbed up. No damage to rails and only a few knee prints went into the foam. So yes to Dave's comment about foam deforming with pressure, but it takes a lot of pressure.
I am curious about how quiet a train would be running on 2 inch foam. Sounds like a winter project - pun intended. To answer Mike's question, I would probably make some kind of hot wire knife to carve out a gully trackside. An inch deep at 4 scale feet should be fine visually. Just create the gully shape in the wire and drag through the foam. My only concern over foam is its compressibility and the potential for heavy engines to depress the track and create operating problems. Just don't know, but I did not care for the WS foam track bed for that reason.
This hobby makes me think harder than most jobs did. Yikes!!!
@mike g. I found it's easier to get a more natural look if you ballast last. I learned the hard way to get down a scenery base and ballast before populating a layout with trains as it's much easier to do with nothing in the way. What I've put down is a 1-1 mix of Scenic Express EX826E and EX830E ground foam. On this layout I will be placing static grass over top of it with a home made applicator. Any loose grasses on the ballast will be removed when vacuuming. I've attached a pic below of an area I already applied static grass to. Essentially, I'm just copying what Martin Welburg does using the same products (Silfor static grass). Silfor is more expensive but I've tried all the makers and found it gives the best results for my skill set.
With respect to securing track. My old layout used vinylbed over plywood. This layout uses cork roadbed over 2" foam. On both layouts all I used to hold the ballast was a mix of elmers glue and water mixed at a rate of 3 parts 1 water and 1 part glue along with spraying isopropyl alcohol to break the surface tension. I've never used nails. At some point I will ballast my lift out sections - remind me and I'll post a pic of holding them upside down. Simply put, there is no need for screws to hold down track if you've ballasted properly. I used liquid nails to glue the roadbed to the layout top (both plywood and foam).
@ScoutingDad You're not picking on me The cork was given to me as a throw-in to a purchase I made when buying track off of someone who had purchased more than they needed. To be honest, I never thought of doing that but in hindsight, I probably wouldn't have done it if I had to do things over. I just think it will take too much time and I don't think I'd like a drainage ditch around all of the track.
With respect to heavy engines depressing the track - that's not a concern. I have a friend who has the same setup and he has no problems running a 40 car train with double-headed Big Boys on the point. As to noise, it's louder than homasote over plywood for sure, but to me it's not too much louder and the benefits to making scenery outweigh the noise. But then again, my favorite genre of music is metal and I like it loud and I'm used to the club layout which of course is very loud when fully running. Plus, trains are loud in real life. If I was a carpenter I'd have built an open-grid platform for ease in making multi-level scenery. You don't know how impressed I am with the fact I built my benchwork and it's level all the way around!
I appreciate everyone's comments!
-Greg