Anyone ever try this way to limit Fastrack noise?

I have 1/2" plywood screwed down to 2 x 4's frame.  I have green felt covering the plywood stapled on the sides of the plywood.  I use 1/2" thick charcoal black soft foam with 1/2" overhangs on both sides of the Fastrack.  The bottom of the foam is glued to the felt with foam glue, the Fastrack is centered on the top of the foam and they are glued together with the foam glue. You want to find a foam that is fairly firm but not solid so that it holds the track fairly level when the trains run over it. ( Track Bed by Woodland Scenic is pretty close to it). I have all 031 or O36 curves and no problem coming loose. Only places Track is screwed to the plywood is at end of track bumpers. This made a big difference reducing sounds on the layout.  As it is in the living room I have to try having it be as quiet as possible . I'm pleased with it so far as is my wife.

As I have mentioned before.................Midwest Cork glued to the underside/inside the roadbed will reduce the sound substantially. To my ear, the sound (noise) is reduced 50%.

 

Regards,

Frank

As a member of the Maine 3 Railers I can say that simply putting a layer of green felt under the track makes a big difference.

I have my Lionel Fastrack laid on Homosote sound board and have no trouble at all with sound.  The trains themselves make more noise than the track does especially with engine revving, chuffing, etc. 

 

Steve, Lady and Tex

My new layout has 1/2" Plywood, 1" Blue Styrofoam covered in an Indoor/Outdoor no backing carpet from Home Depot.  My Fasttrack is no noisier than my K line Smap Track was.  I was just running 2 trains at once and is was not Noisy.

I've tried most of what is mentioned. What I am using now is homosote top of my plywood and homosote under my plywood. It works very well but is expensive on a big layout. I'm down to 4x8 right now and the track is screwed down. If it wasn't expensive, I would fill the underneath of the tracks with realistic water

 

As for the other poster stating hollow rails. I read about 10 years ago that someone was inserting weed wacker line into the rails. That just seems too much work.

 

BTW, steamies are louder than diesels on fastrack.

No, don't get Great Stuff anywhere near your FasTrack. Swafford's method is tedious, but effective. I use 2mm, closed cell foam which is used for laminate floor underlayment for sound abatement. The cork has similar sound properties. We had a cutting party for the pieces with the family. I made templates of the bays and traced them on to the material. Then I used a hot glue gun with a few dabs to fasten them.

I also cover the deck with the same material.

 

I use the Decibel 10th app from the app store(free) on an iPad and get a 23db sound reduction compared to track on wood and about 18db compared to track on homosote.

 

Now, most of the sound comes from hollow cars like passenger cars and box cars.

When I had Fastrack and was tackling the noise problem I had no problems using Great Stuff in a type of assembly line process to make, say, 25 feet of it overnight.  It did more than any single other thing else to cut noise.

Larry

Like your passing sidings and your yard.

awesome layout!!

Happy Railroading

 

Malcolm(Popi)

I'm curious to know the Decibel rating for the locomotives with sound is, let's say, at a mid range or normal volume level.  I bet the noise level would over power any track noise present.

 

Steve, Lady and Tex

Long ago I post a long thread about my results.  I got a DB meter and tested everything.  At its worse, the noise from Fastrack was louder than the noise of the chuffing on my steamers.  All the measures I took, together, brought it down so that the sound (what  I wanted to hear) was hearable over the nise (sound I don't want to hear).  I just don't remember the details. 

Cell foam and/or cork will be good to place underneath the fastrack roadbed itself.  But did you ever consider putting some pillow batting that can be purchased at a sewing store?  This stuff is real light and fluffy.  My wife uses it when she makes padded items.  You can stuff it lightly inside the roadbed.  DO NOT PACK IT.  Like fiberglass insulation, it works best when it is not compressed.  It might reduce any hollow sounds coming from inside the roadbed.

This thread 

https://ogrforum.com/t...33#26912068693009933

May be helpful. 

 

I measured 60 dB on my fastrack layout. Doesn't seem too loud to me. 

Maybe you guys should try operating in a vacuum! 

Eight years using Fastrack, creating over a dozen different displays, I've tried everything to make the sound less offensive for those wearing hearing aids in our home. Plush carpeting is probably the easiest solution. Gluing cork or any other sound absorption directly under the road bed works well, but it is very time consuming and can add a lot of unneeded weight if you're building a mobile display.

A neighbor tossed a lot of the closed cell foam carpet padding away this past year so I'm trying that on our Christmas display which uses a cookie cutter design. It's working alright  but not as well as other methods.

The biggest issue with Fastrack is the void created between the plastic roadbed and the sub roadbed, which causes the plastic to resonate. The best results I've achieved attempting to neutralize the resonating characteristics of the plastic roadbed is when floating the track over plush carpeting, Buffalo Snow or any other soft, low density material. As long as that void exists you're going to have some excess noise. It may be less noticeable depending on the sub roadbed used and other variables in the landscaping, but it's still there.

This is fascinating reading. It seems to me that the problem is not so much the transmission of noise, but that the plastic roadbed vibrates.  As Lee says, like a violin.  So you have three choices:

 

1) Try to absorb the sound, which is what most of you are doing when adding carpet, insulation, etc, either directly under the track, or by adding scenery.  The problem with this approach is while you are limiting the sound transmitted to the layout table, you still have the Roadbed transmitting sound through the air.  It is basically an inefficient, but effective speaker cone.

 

2) Try clamping the track to something more massive, like the benchwork, in order to prevent the track from vibrating.  The problems here are its tough to get a truly solid acoustic connection, and even if you do, its only through the edges. So the rest of the roadbed is still free to vibrate.   

 

3) Change the frequency at which the roadbed vibrates to well below the frequency you can hear.  The way to do that is to substantially increase the mass of the plastic roadbed.  Note, you can't just have weight attached to the roadbed in a few places, it has to be in intimate contact with all of the roadbed.  So fill the underside with hydrocal, or plaster, or sculptamold filled with sand (or lead shot), etc.

 

That's an interesting idea. Most folks think in terms of putting something soft under the track to absorb sound. No. 3 here is the opposite, putting something solid inside the plastic roadbed. This seems like it may be a better approach. Not sure of the expense, but turning over the Fastrack and pouring that plastic stuff used to make water on a layout might work. It would self-level and then harden, and create a solid roadbed. It would be interesting to try that, and then lay the solid roadbed track on an absorbent material, and see what happens.

I did a similar thing with Woodland Scenics Foam Roadbed. Can't say if it's better or worse than the cork, but it did a pretty good job of quieting things down.

 

Gilly

Now I know what to do with my leftover cork!

If you want noisy, run a floor layout on laminate flooring!

John Sethian's suggestion to use sand is probably a good one to try.  If you build up the mass with an inert material like sand, that should effectively stop vibration.  Other solid materials inside (with the exception of pillow batting) have their own vibration point and can transmit that vibration, unlike sand.  Plus sand is cheaper and can be picked up if you do not like the results.  Increasing mass has always been one method to reduce sound vibration.  In the old days of audio turntables, instead of isolating the turntable with springs to reduce vibration, some companies (Empire, for example) made extremely heavy platters and solid bases that were heavy, and high mass tone arms.  This not only reduced vibration but also the heavy platters kept the turntable speed consistent.  The platter was turned by a belt to isolate the motor vibration.   I'd try increasing the mass if I had Fastrack.

Found this on another model train forum.  Person claims it is the best way to attenuate noise using carpet foam.

I silenced my fastrak by selling it and buying Atlas. 

fred