After putting on a layer of 1" foam on top of the baseboard frame on my ISL in n-scale, I read on various forums of problems with foam tranmitting a lot of noise of trains passing over it and some of you are stopping using it for that reason alone. From the limited amount of test running I've been doing on the new areas it is noiser than my original layout that has cork on top of ply. I laid the track for the mainline on foam meat tray roadbed (I'm cheap and want to reuse instead of throwing away/recycling) so I have a decent ballast profile and laid the runaround track/industry lead and industry tracks directly on the 1" foam so that they are lower than the mainline. Other than tearing everything up and relaying on cork or Woodland Scenics foam roadbed is there another way to insulate against noise such as stuffing something underneath the baseboards (sound insulation maybe?) I'm using Woodland Scenics ballast with diluted white glue - not sure if that has reduced the noise as I am not yet done ballasting. Thanks, Marc
I would suggest you find a rubberized acrylic latex caulk (I use DAP ALex Plus with Silicone, but I would test that on the foam first!!!) and run beads of it along the bottom of your foam if you can still get at it, and also wedge some wooden shimstock between the frame and foam using that rubberized foam as well. Between the rubberized streaks running in paralllel squiggles along the bottom surface of your foam, and the buffers of caulk-covered wood shims, the foam should not act so much like a soundboard.
Marc, get the ghosts out of your layout................... DONT LAUGH.......i hoestly dropped things on the floor of the train room and to this day i have not found,have a large magnetic telescoping pick up ,no help several engines missing screws and kadee couplers.......... seriously they make a special caulk for the adhesion of foam to wood ,many surfaces[including foam to foam] sells at home depot for around 4 dollars, it is blue in color and works very good i have used it. Have come to find as you apply the adhesive with a caulking gun, smooth out the caulk to cover the entire section.....apply to both surfaces and wait for 10 min. untill very tacky then put together and place a weight to cover entire section dry over night.......................should keep the noise out.
Thanks for the advice about using the sound-absorbing caulk - great idea had I asked BEFORE construction (but I still have some areas to do so will try this for the new areas). Not sure if I can get the foam in between the baseboard and the foam slab as I glued the two together and also don't want to risk disturbing the track that is laid on top. I did use regular acrylic caulk to mount the track, but of course used only a very thin coating. Maybe I just need to get some ambient and loco sound to drown out the noise. Either add sound when I go to DCC (although in N that might not work for every loco), or add speakers underneath to mimic sound coming from the locos and surroundings (some loud mooing cows or heavy industry type noise). Kinda like turning up the stereo in the car to not hear the noisy muffler!
