Bitumen

I have heard that track laid straight on foam causes a lot of noise from the trains. So even if I do not want much of a roadbed profile I think I need some kind of noise dampening to go under the rails. I am also afraid that the foam will not withstand the pressure when spikes are driven into the ties, so I want something between the ties and the foam for that reason also.

I then came to think about an article by Pelle Soeborg in MR a few years ago, where he showed how he used bitumen mats as a sound dampener. Bitumen, as in the stuff used for sound dampening in for instance cars. Since I have no experience of bitumen I did not know if it would be soft enough to drive spikes through it, and at the same time not being to soft so it would do not do any good when it came to protecting the foam.

Well, I simply had to try it out to find out! So I went to an auto parts dealer (Biltema here in Sweden) and bought a pack of 4 bitumen mats. Here it is.

It turned out it is soft enough to cut with a knife, and also soft enough to drive spikes into. It also seems stiff enough to protect the foam from the pressure from the spike driving process. Here is a slice of it, the same width as the track and ties.

 

 

A successful test so far.