Transition from main to secondary trackwork

[chuck geiger]

I need to make a transition on the new layout from a "higball" main to secondary. The mainline is thicker cork to regular Midwest N cork on the secondary. What do you recommend? - Plastic shims? (No change in rail code)

[up1950s]

I have heard that leave the air gap and fasten the rails on both levels , then add ballast to fill the air gap .

[chuck geiger]

Use to do that and it did work and looked great - Lots of rock though - Here's how it looked at worked on an HO layout,

[TiVoPrince]

Use a Shurform
rasp to dig into the surface foam to form a valley and create a smoothish transition.  Alternatively a nice moment or two with a belt sander will take care of transitioning that thick roadbed. Caution: this will result in a huge mess and destroy a lot of valuable material before you get what you really want...

[asciibaron]

i use card stock shims - works great.

-steve

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I'm with Richie, just fill it all in with ballast. It's not like you're talking about .5" difference, right?

[chuck geiger]

No it's slight...and it will only ride about several inches.

[asciibaron]

I'm with Richie, just fill it all in with ballast. It's not like you're talking about .5" difference, right?

mine are the height of the cork roadbed and i used shims to make sure there is no bow in the rail.

-steve

[chuck geiger]

for the discriminate modeler - Which ballast HIGHBALL, ARIZONA ROCK AND MINERAL or cat litter?

[John]

for the discriminate modeler - Which ballast HIGHBALL, ARIZONA ROCK AND MINERAL or cat litter?

Cat Litter .. no other

[bsoplinger]

for the discriminate modeler - Which ballast HIGHBALL, ARIZONA ROCK AND MINERAL or cat litter?

Cat Litter .. no other

This was a serious question? You mean there are people out there who've ballasted their layout with cat litter? (New I hope!  : )

[asciibaron]

for the discriminate modeler - Which ballast HIGHBALL, ARIZONA ROCK AND MINERAL or cat litter?

Cat Litter .. no other

used cat litter - accept no subsitute

[Norm P]

This was a serious question? You mean there are people out there who've ballasted their layout with cat litter? (New I hope!  : )

When I first started looking at modeling N scale, I ran across several posts on the various boards recommending cat litter as ballast.  I don't know much, and I knew even less then, but somehow I was able to figure out that there were better forms of ballasting than "Fresh Magic."

[Zox]

You mean there are people out there who've ballasted their layout with cat litter? (New I hope!  : )

I've still got a gallon jug of cat litter sitting around somewhere, from back when I started getting seriously into model railroading (early- to mid-1990s). It's a whole lot cheaper than ballast, and looked about right.

But it didn't work very well in a test application, which is why I still have an almost-full gallon jug of cat litter sitting around somewhere...