New Railway Modellers Forums

Hi

Has anyone used the above instead of cork with glue/pins?

Phil

I've used it, the track is held well, ballast less so. I think the problem with ballast is due to the lack of flat surface to attach to on the granules. I ended up putting neat PVA between the sleepers and pressing it down with the flat end of a piece of 12x3mm strip. I wouldn't have liked to do it for the whole layout.

I used it on a couple of short stretches thinking it would save time. It is very difficult if not impossible to adjust anything, where you put it down is where it stays. On code 100 flexi its bad enough, on code 75 bullhead you'll pull the rail out of the chairs trying to lift it to relay.

I've gone back to Copydex and weights.

How well it holds depends on the area of contact. I used a straight piece of code75. The sleepers were hollow underneath and it could be released by sliding a craft knife blade under the sleepers, it was a new snap off blade fully extended. Some older code 100 flexible track I had, had solid sleepers, which presented a flat face to the tape, as you say it didn't want to let go. Same thing with the granular ballast it needed squashing down as the grains weren't presenting a flat face to the tape.

Looks like a bit of experimenting is needed as I haven't worked out how to deal with curves yet
Thanks for all your input.

Phil