After the road bed was installed, it was time to lay the track. This took about six hours spread over three days.
This is my second
overhead layout. In the first, the roadbed was home-made from wood. I found that
the roadbed acted as a resonator for the sound of the train running on the
track. It made quite a rumble. To rectify this resonance on that first layout, I cut up one of those non-skid pads you put under a
throw rug and placed that under the track. I also used a layer of the non-skid
pad between the roadbed and the support brackets. >>>
I planned to soundproof this overhead layout, too, but in this case, the track doesn't sit on a flat piece of wood. It sits on top of two 1/2" square metal tubes. It would be impractical to cut and position the non-skid pad material over the tubes. Fortunately, I found a better solution: Frost King Vinyl Foam Weatherseal. This foam material comes in a 3/16" thick self-adhesive strip 3/8" wide. A perfect fit for the Eaglewings roadbed. It's economical, too. Just $3.00/60 feet, or $21 for the whole layout.
So, before laying the track, I put a strip of the Weatherseal down, as shown below..
Then I
just set the track on top of the foam. Not only does this muffle the noise, but
it also smoothes out the slight changes in elevation between each piece of the
roadbed. Also, the weight of the track and the train on top of it pushes the
ties into the foam, tending to lock the track in place. Only time will tell
whether this stuff will dry out and disintegrate to powder over time. (It has a three-year guarantee.)
The track went down pretty much as it was laid out in the RR-Track program. In three places, I had to swap out some of the track sections for something slightly shorter--in no case no more than an inch was removed. This usually happens when transferring the computer-drawn track plan to the real world. In this case, considering the errors introduced by my measurements, the tracing of the components for Eaglewings Iron Craft, the metal crafting itself, and the bolting of the pieces together, it's really quite amazing that it all fit together so well.
Now it was time to get the trains running.
Click here for installation pictures.
Click here for before and after shots of the entire layout.
Click here for pictures of the first run!