Model Railway Forum

Hi there. I’m rebuilding my railway and am going to reuse the baseboards. These came from MRS and are topped with plywood and then Sundeala. I’ve removed all the ballasted track, points etc and am busy scraping away the remaining ballast and other stuff stick to the surface. When this is done the surface will be reasonable but certainly not as pristine as it was when I started. I’m wondering whether I should cover the surface with cork, both to iron out any imperfections and to help reduce noise. Thoughts please.

The board I think should be flat as possible, I reused my one. First I scraped everything off then I sanded it over to remove the lumps and bumps. Got it back to as new almost condition.


Then gave it another coat of Gray silk Emulsion paint out of the B&Q cheap bin.

Just to add my boards are just plywood sheet dont know how you will fair if it has that Sundella stuff on top.

If you are considering ballasting your track cork underlay will make no difference to noise.