There has been a fair amount of discussion about how noisy trains are when running on unsupported foam. I've contributed my part, which consists mostly of theory. However, in acoustics, reality and theory are often a loose match, and I really have little experience with the materials we are talking about. So I decided to do some experiments.

As a test bed, I built a simple frame with a piece of 1" foam across the top:

What I mean is that on most L girder benchwork the  short  leg of the inverted "L's" are turned  turned outward  away from each other.  I'm adapting some girders from my old bench work   to make a 2X10 layout and it almost seems like  it would be better to turn the L's in. So any disadvantage to doing so?

Michael

Before I cut this thing up for kindling or scrap wood..

I have a 1' wide, 8' long piece of benchwork (built in 3 pieces bolted securely together), complete with cork roadbed.  I pulled up all the track, but the cork is still there and in decent condition.  If anybody wants it, they're welcome to it.  I rather doubt it, but maybe there's somebody in the area who doesn't want to bother building benchwork.  This is pretty sturdy and square, 1x4 frame with 5/8" plywood top.  Here's the track plan:

As I continue my journey of choices...choices... and more choices leading up to starting construction, I continue to wrack my brain over how I want to do the roadbed.  My old HO layout used plywood covered by 2" foam and built up from there.  Building up the elevations was difficult at best to get uniform.