Picking the Best Model Railroad Roadbed for Your Layout

After you've figured out what you're using for a sub-road bed, it's time to think about the roadbed that the track will actually be mounted on top of. Now, if you're modeling an industrial area or perhaps a yard where the track is supposed to be laid directly on the ground. You probably won't need any roadbed at all. But by and large any mainlines, any short lines, will have roadbed material underneath the track. And there's a lot of different materials that you can use for roadbed if you want to do search on the internet you can find that throughout the last dozen decades model railroaders have been using all kind of material for roadbed material. We'll look at some of the most popular ones here. And it's important to know that the roadbed material I'm about to show you will work just fine on plywood or if you're using pink extruded foam as your sub-roadbed. It'll work just fine on that too you just need to think about what kind of adhesive you're going to use to lay it down with. You may not need roadbed at all if you decide to use sectional track. Four manufacturers make sectional track that has the track actually molded onto a piece of roadbed. Atlas makes it, Bachmann makes it, PIKO makes it, and this happens to be KATO Uni-track. The track will snap together and make a very nice joint, and again it's already on the roadbed so if you're building a layout that may not be permanent or you're building a layout where you want to run some trains on the carpet this is the perfect solution for you. But if you are building a more permanent layout, again you'll need some sort of roadbed. Perhaps the oldest and still one of the more popular roadbeds available today is a product called homasote. This is a compressed paper product that's used in the building industry for roofing, and it's used especially for sound deadening. Again, this is paper, it's gray because its recycled paper and the ink in the recycled paper will tend to make it gray. It usually comes in half inch thick sheets in 4 by 4, 4 by 8, you can order the sheets from many home centers. Many home centers stock it, if they don't stock it, they can probably special order it for you. Homasote is a great sound deadening material for roadbed so that you can have a track mounted to the top of this and it's very, very, very quiet. It also holds spikes extremely well. So if you're handling your track or you're using spikes to lay flex track, when you pop those spikes into the homasote it will grip them very nicely. One of the big downsides of homasote is the fact that it is extremely messy to work with. This is about a two foot section that I cut off a sheet of homasote. This picture here will show you the amount of dust that was generated from just this two foot cut. I took a portable table saw out to the driveway and cut this thing and you basically have a snow flurry of paper dust. It's not very pleasant to work with. But, thankfully a manufacturer named California Roadbed has come up with a solution for that. And that is a product that they make called Homa Bed. This is made out of homasote, it comes in preformed sections. It also has a bevel on it for nice roadbed angle of repose of your ballast. It comes in 45 degree and 60 degree angles. 60 degree angle is a little bit more prototypical for angle of repose. The manufacturer, California Roadbed, makes turnout pads, they make straight sections, they make all kinds of different variants for whatever you're using for your model railroad. These particular pieces here have kerfs cut into them. Which makes it ideal for bending around curves. So you can glue this down, nail it down, however you put it down to your thing, to your sub-roadbed and it will hold a curve very nicely. And you can be pretty versatile with that. That is homasote and Homa Bed, those have been around almost since the beginning of model railroading. One of the more recent pieces of roadbed you can buy comes from Woodland Scenics, and this is foam, it's called Track-Bed, that's their brand name for it. This is a quarter inch piece of foam, it has a split down the middle just like cork does, and we'll talk about cork in a second. And its also got a nice bevel on the sides so that your ballast has a nice angle of repose on it. This you would lay down exactly the same way as you'd lay down cork, except that you'd use Woodland Scenics' foam glue to adhere it to your extruded foam or to your plywood sub-roadbed. One of the advantages of this is it's readily available at hobby stores. It comes in either sections this long or rolls. It's very versatile, it's very economical, and it's also very very quiet because it's foam. Also, if you have a little bit of irregularity in your sub-roadbed, you have some screws say popping up or some pieces of wood, because it's foam it will kind of compensate for that. One of the downsides of this kind of roadbed is the fact that it's foam. So if you happen to have a bend in your track a little bit or some sort of irregularity of the track because it's foam it's not gonna supply a very stable base for that track. But very good product and again it's very, very quiet. But perhaps one of the most popular, if not the most popular method of having roadbed on your model railroad is by using cork strips. This is made by Midwest Products. It's a cork strip that comes in a 3 foot section, it's split down the center so that you can literally just pull it apart and you've got a nice angle on either side for your ballast. Cork can be put down with caulk or nails or glue. If you're modeling an industrial area where perhaps the track again is supposed to look like it's mounted directly on the ground Midwest Products also makes sheets of cork that you can lay your track directly on. So those are some of the considerations you need to take into account when you're laying you roadbed and making those decisions for your model railroad layout.