Glue or pin rail?

[yelrow]

Sandy, hi, i have been building model railways for 60 years. Have Never ballasted. Your layouts are very personal to you, as the builder, and are not usually intended for public view. Hence the choice, is ours. Many dont ballast, as like me, the fun of the hobby, is regularly changing layout. A pretty ballasted finished layout, would bore me to tears. It would finish up, covered in dust and never used. I run Hornby Dublo, 3 rail, 00 DC, oo DCC, TT gauge, N gauge, and Z gauge. Each layout, changes, with alarming regularity. With over 140 locos, i like to give them all an occasional airing. have 5 00 loops, 2 DCC loops, 5 N gauge loops, 1 3 rail, i TT, and 1 Z. I fully accept my layout does not resemble the real thing, but it was never designed to. Built simply for hours of pleasure during long winter evenings. Hence the screws. Makes upping and downing a doddle. The village children , who come to play trains, dont seem to mind the lack of ballast/ realism. They just relish the opportunity, to control a variety of gauges. At 78, i am a bit old to change now, but i fully understand the need for some to go the extra mile.

[sandy]

Thanks Yelrow but I have been in the hobby just as long as you have and done other gauges as well just like you. Just have diferent way of doing things. I can asure you my prity ballasted layouts are not dirty and dusty even after many years of use.

[sandy]

Thanks TWD I did not know that PVA glue broke down so easily. It does, tried to this morning. Even at 50/50 mix.

[Walkingthedog]

Thanks Yelrow but I have been in the hobby just as long as you have and done other gauges as well just like you. Just have diferent way of doing things. I can asure you my prity ballasted layouts are not dirty and dusty even after many years of use.

I’ve always ballasted my layouts.

[brian1951]

A ballasted set up is classed as a layout, a un-ballasted one is a train set.

[Steve M]

I think I will pull up a chair get some of this after that last post.

[Walkingthedog]

Must admit I usually refer to mine as a train set, although I have always considered that a train set is a layout that comes with all the bits in one box.

[brian1951]

Im ready too.

[yelrow]

I am very happy with train set. I bought the Majestic DCC Set. To me a train set comes in a box. Once you put it on a baseboard, and add bits, then it becomes to my mind, a layout. Interesting discussion though. I have discussed this before on other forums, and they came up with Set Layout, building a specific scale model of a terminus, or a memory of a line from your childhood.. I just lay a rail, then another, and see where it goes. At the moment,it goes up and down, over 2 Helixes .

[cheshire lines]

When I first started Lostock Junction I used the Peco foam underlay and Peco track pins to fasten the track down . Although not as realistic as 'proper' glued ballast, the foam underlay has the advantage of being easier to remove when I wanted to change the track formation. As I'm not great at using track planning software, there was quite a lot of trial and error in the early days in terms of crossovers and siding locations etc.

Although it's been said that the underlay degrades over time, some of mine (the main running lines on the Lostock Junction side of the layout) has been down for over ten years and still looks OK.
More recent changes have been ballasted, partly to make the loco-shed area more realistic and partly because I wanted to change the points in the goods yard to electro-frog ones, for which underlay wasn't available.

When I decided to make the fiddle yard area at the back of the layout scenic (as the Exchange Sidings) I ballasted that area too, mostly because Peco have stopped making the underlay pieces for their Set Track points (although they do still do the rolls of underlay for the straight sections).
I pinned the track down first and then ballasted it. To be honest ballasting isn't my favourite job and I'm not sure that I've got the technique quite right yet!