Baseboards and Track

Updated 14 May 2011

Most of my track is Peco bullhead. I started by pinning it to an L girder made up with two pieces of 4" x 2" rescued from the demolition of the roof of an old cottage. The wood was treated with dark brown Garden Timbercare from B&Q. However the surface of the wood dried out from the heat of the sun and cracked. Rain lay in the cracks and the wood started to rot. Also the rail expanded and shrunk with the heat sometimes moving in the chairs and sometimes not, leading to a lot of distortion in the track.

I now use 18mm WBP Brazil ply (from B&Q) on a 4"x2" frame. It is all well creosoted and then felted. So far I have tried Marley High Performance Underlay (Sand Finish) and Marley 14 Traditional Lightweight Felt (Sand Finish). The felt is glued to the ply with Wickes Bitumous Roofing Adhesive. A further layer of felt just under the sleepers is glued to this and track glued on top. Stone ballast (Bird Grit) is then used to kill the exposed adhesive. Ronseal outdoor Clear Satin Varnish diluted 50/50 with White Spirit is dribbled on the ballast to hold it together using a pipette. Hopefully that will lead to a firm waterproof foundation. The rail will now move through the chairs without distorting the track. Time will tell how long this will last but my first piece of ballasted track has been down since 2001 with no ill effects.

WARNING: I tried using Ronseal Matt Varnish and white spirit on my indoor 3mm track but the plastic chairs came away from the plywood sleepers. When I read the small print on the tin of varnish it said "Do not use on plastic type materials"! So, on my 3mm layout I now use Rustin's Shellac Sanding Sealer diluted with methylated spirits. However I have seen no ill effects outside so I have continued there with the varnish and white spirit.

The photograph shows track before and after ballasting. The white strips are PVC screwed to the end of each board. Without these the adhesive seeps through the felt and glues the boards together!

I have built a pergola over part of the station area to protect it from the gunge that falls from overhanging fir trees. This gunge forms a nasty green deposit which is more of a problem than sun and rain.

It is now 2011 and some of the cheaper exposed felt is shrinking and splitting. However I don't want to put you off so first here is the more expensive High Performance Underlay.

Now the cheaper stuff which has gone like this:

and moves on to this:

and this:

Clearly the plywood is not going to survive unless I do some maintenance soon. I think the felt under the ballast may be alright so I have 2 options.

The first option is to remove the track by cutting the felt at the ballast edges. Then lay new felt on the baseboard and glue the track back on top of that. I did this several years ago with a 10ft length of track which I had mistakenly laid on blockboard. This is still fine with no ill effects to date as you can see below.

This also shows more of the High Performance felt and the bell cable which I used for track feeders and hide in the ballast shoulder. This is still waiting for a bit more ballast. These days I use a thinner black cable.

The second option is to remove the damaged felt and lay a patch of new felt. I think this will only work if I ballast over the joins to keep the water out.

I will let you know how I get on.

Repair to Felt - 27 September 2011

As seen on my web site at http://www.jswalker.demon.co.uk/7mm/baseboard/bb.htm some of the cheaper felt has started to deteriorate like this:

The felt under the ballasted track seems to be fine and is fixed securely to the baseboard. So, I cut the rest of the felt away using a Stanley knife against the ballast shoulder. Then I cut a new piece of felt again using the ballast shoulder as a guide and fixed it in my normal way as described above.

When I went to buy more felt from B&Q I found that the products had all changed. I finished up buying a roll of High Performance Polyester Underlay Sand Surfaced Roofing Felt from Wickes. This shows various stages of construction:

The new felt can be seen butted up to the ballast shoulder. The new C&L track is laid on a second layer of felt just under the sleepers. Ballast is laid between the old and new tracks and will hopefully provide a waterproof join between the old and new felt.

Time will tell whether the repair and new felt will last better than the exposed old felt.

Nearly Done - 5 October

The middle track is now laid and ballasted so the join in the felt should be waterproof. The outer track is almost complete.

The original track on the inside is Peco. The middle 4 meters of the new tracks are ready made C&L. This will not be visible at close quarters once the shrubs have grown back. However at each end of the curves there is just over a 60ft panel built from C&L components. You can see where the chairs change colour on the middle track. The lines in the ballast are waiting for wiring up before ballasting over.

Straight ahead - 11 October 2011

The 3 tracks have now reached the straight section across the lawn.

I have set the track centres around the curve at 84mm. That is 4mm more than for a Peco crossover to give a bit of extra clearance for long vehicles. On the straight I have changed that to 80mm between the up and down main (inner and middle tracks) and 88mm between the down main and the down relief. I used Templot for the track panels and transitions.

There is still the wiring to do and about 6 metres of straight panels across the lawn to the junction. I plan to build some panels at the Worsley Works Modellers Weekend.

More track laying may have to wait for better weather in 2012.

Another Repair - 24 October 2011

The good weather prompted me to look at the next board with a felt problem. This uncovered a rotten corner as shown below. This has now taken the highest priority while the weather allows me to sort it.

I have cut out the offending rot and added new framing and top to the baseboard shown above. Here it is with the join in the felt covered by the ballast shoulder. The covers are used to protect it. It takes a long time to dry even in this mild weather.