Roadbed for a yard?

I use fiber board for roadbed, and put it down in large sheets. For mainlines, I carve a beveled profile. When it comes to yards and industries, I just leave it flat, but still plan to ballast.

Just as Elliot said, large sheets of whatever you're gonna use... cork, foam, homasote, celotex. I wouldnt put the track directly down on the plywood.

I was looking thru a book on the Seaboard Air Line not long ago and noticed a photo of one of their yards.  It looked like the track was disappearing in the dirt/cinders, didn't see a lot of ballast like on a mainline.

 

I've got my small yard built on a plywood base, then 3/8" rubber matting for roadbed, then track.  Between the tracks I used some Fusion Fiber:

 

http://www.truescene.com/products

 

I haven't put any "fill" (ballast, dirt, etc) on the track yet, but plan on doing something soon as soon as I get more Fusion Fiber to fill up some low spots and cover the sides of the roadbed.  Here's a couple of photos showing the rubber and Fusion Fiber (covered with cinders and small ballast):

 

 

 

On my old garage layout I had a yard covered by a single sheet of the rubber matting.  It was simple/easy to lay down and made things very quiet.

Yard tracks would have little or no "profile".  The tracks would be on bed of ballast with a hint of a drainage area between parallel tracks.

I have not seen many yards on the FEC, but there is one that I drive by on a semi regular basis. It has just 2 tracks left(used to be 5). The main line is ballasted approx. 12" high, the yard tracks are just about ground level- there's maybe 3-4" of ballast. So that's what you should try to emulate---

Yard tracks are typically burried in the dirt, at least up to the top of the ties. Industry tracks are typically burried up to the top of the rail.

On the club modular layout yard, we used Woodland Scenics roadbed. We then cut strips of 1/8" fanfold insulation to build the height back up to the ties. It saved us a lot of ballast, weight, and looks much more realistic.

 

Gilly 

yard tracks are generally flat across. i would just attach to any flat surface and ballast right across, newer yard cleaner ballast...one thats been there blends of ballast and cinders a little dirt here and there. there is of course always an exception but everyone ive ever worked in was even all the way across. conrail john

Thanks for the answers guys. I can always depend on you guys for the info I need.

I submerged my Yard tracks to have tie tops at ground level. The tracks are laid directly on the underlayment and 5/16" foam board is laid [glued]on top between the tracks. In most of the steam era yards I observed the top of ties were generally at ground level.Black oily ballast shows down between the ties.

 

I did what Gilly suggested above.  After track was laid directly on the Homasote, I cut strips of 1/4" extruded styrofoam, painted them black, and glued them between the tracks.  This brought a black "ground level" up to the tops of the ties.  A little black/cinders ballast mix completed the basic job.  I used some HO cinders on top along with some Woodland Scenics earth blend here and there.

 

Click on the photo for a larger view.

 

 

That's a really nice image Bob!

On thing I copied from real railroads is making the main track higher than the yard and other auxiliary tracks, to prevent any roll-out of equipment.  Most model cars do not roll freely enough to be a problem, but some do.

When I was building my last layout I managed to acquire a large amount of N scale cork roadbed at a very cheap price.  I found that laying this between tracks in the yard gave the desired effect of making the ties appear to be sinking into the landscape.  An added advantage was that I could use the beveled side when I wanted to create minor ditches.

I used Woodland Scenics foam roadbed on all my mainlines, but just laid the tracks directly on the plywood in all the yards.  This saved a lot of roadbed material and lowered my yards prototypically.  The sounds are not bad at slow speeds so that was not a problem.  I like the idea of filling in between the yard tracks before you ballast.

 

Art

yard tracks are generally flat across. I just attach to flat surface and ballast right across.

 

 

 

 

You can't really see it from this angle but the outer track (mainline) is elevated the highest from the ground level. The next track in is the siding, and it's about 3/16" lower than the mainline. Then all the inner industry tracks drop down to ground level and will be buried in the dirt. Most likely the ground level is even with the top of the rail head, so when you walk around on the ground, you're not stepping over the rail.

This is normally the case, especially with industry tracks that have been around for decades.