Just wanted to know some thought on what to put down on my bench work. I have plywood down now,, but i have foam. I want to put a river in it. I'm going to use the cookie cutter mathod to put elevations. thanks
Foam or Plywood?
- Thread starter andywyeth07
- Start date
alexander
Member
andywyeth07 said:
I'm using Styrofoam on Plywood, it seems to work,, and i'm willingt to scrap it if need be. If you want to put waterways on it, i sugguest you use Foam, it will make life easy.
Alexander
Personally if I was just using manual throws for my turnouts I would be using a foam board ontop of plywood . You really get the advantage of being able to carve your scenery ie rivers into the foam board . For me I'm using a ton of tortoise switches along side dcc and I just didn't want to get into the nitemare of digging holes for them or haveing extra long throw wires.
I like using styrofoam for 3 main reasons.
1st = Styrofoam is faster and cleaner to work with.
2nd = Styrofoam will make your layout a lot quieter when running trains than wood.
3rd = It will make your layout a lot lighter if you need to move it at some point in time.
Just thought I would give my personal opinion on this matter.
1st = Styrofoam is faster and cleaner to work with.
2nd = Styrofoam will make your layout a lot quieter when running trains than wood.
3rd = It will make your layout a lot lighter if you need to move it at some point in time.
Just thought I would give my personal opinion on this matter.
Another reason in favor of foam is that if you live in a place where the humidiy varies a lot (like I do -- sometimes below 10%, sometimes over 60% relative humidity) then foam is better because it is geometrically stable. Plywood, chipboard, and in fact any wood product will change dimension, warping track and cracking plaster.
The other big benefits are light weight (if the layout is to be portable) and ease of shaping.
The other big benefits are light weight (if the layout is to be portable) and ease of shaping.