Gluing Rails to wood?

If you did a really quality job, you'll rather use Nickel Silver rail rather than the brass rail. From what you've asked, it sounds like you don't know much of what is available for model railroading trackwork. A good hobbyshop will have the spikes, rail and ties for laying your own track as well as the gauges needed to do that. This is really the way to go for a good looking track. For laying flextrack or snaptrack, you can use something like Liquid Nails, a really decent glue or bathtub adjesive or anything else like that. The ballast will assist in keeping the track from moving about and that is usually applied with a dry glue mixed into the ballast and then applied to the track and wetted.

-- Yeppie, Bush is such an idiot that He usually outwits everybody else. How dumb!

If you're not going to use commercial track and are truly going to fasten rails to wood, you might try two-part epoxy. I've done a fair amount of handlaid trackwork on top [ties which are in turn on top of] of plywood and particle board roadbed (where track spikes were too difficult to push in). Mix the epoxy, then use a toothpick to put a little bead next to the rail to simulate a tie plate. Then, use the toothpick to nudge a few wisps of epoxy over the rail flange. Do this on both side of the rail. If using ties, do at least every other tie (if not every tie). Takes a lot of time but works well. This is about what Paul Mallory suggests in his book "Trackwork Handbook" (although he does it much better). If you're using ties, make sure they are VERY level. If not, you'll get gaps between bottom of rail and top of tie and the epoxy will be drawn underneath and you won't be able to get the desired effect.

You probably want to pa> I've Scratch built a 5 bay roundhouse for my Grandson's HO layout. The

Thanks for the advice. I don't know much about model railroads as you can probably tell. My idea was to simulate a concrete floor in the roundhouse and since I have never been in a real one I don't know if that's what kind of floor roundhouse has. We are using atlas snaptrack code 100 for the layout on woodland scenic trackbed. The rail elevation works out perfectly inside the roundhouse as long as we glue it to the floor rather than using snaptrack. That is why I am asing these questions. Ben

V> If you're not going to use commercial track and are truly going to

Ben spake thus:

Roundhouse floors were indeed concrete. The rails were usually about level with the surface of the floor.

This makes laying track in a roundhouse pretty easy. What I've done is to lay the track (readymade track, like Atlas, Shinohara, Walthers, any good stuff) on a baseboard for the model; I used Masonite. Then I built up the floor to the level of the track using illustration board (thick paperboard used for mounting pictures, etc.) This gives a nice smooth surface that simulates concrete well after painted. You can also put in scribed wood strips between the rails (over the ties) to simulate the wooden covers over the open space between the rails; leave a few gaps here and there just like the real thing.