Hello and Good Evening,

Now that I have been running some trains on Marklin's C track for the past week I have noticed a considerable increase in noise which I am not used to when I was using 2 rail DCC. I've tried to add insulation under the roadbed with limited success. What I find discouraging is spending the big bucks on sound and not being able to hear it from the wheel noise, reminds me of rain hitting the tin roof of the old army barracks from way back when. All I can say is that besides the noise everything runs like a, well, a, MARKLIN the best ever!

Any suggestion on how to deaden the plastic like rumbling sound would be greatly appreciated. Since I'm just starting what are your thought on Marklin K track? I still have boxes of cork roadbed and knowing how quiet trains run on cork maybe that's the best way to do my layout? (I love the look of C track but not the noise!)

In case you're wondering the sound is from the Märklin 39182 German Federal Railroad (DB) Diesel Locomotive pulling four beautiful City-Bahn passenger cars.

Regards,

Michel

Michel,

there are lot of things we haven't been told about it.

As Chris mentioned K-track is quiter but ther are reasons for it.

Someone somewhere has decided 3 rail is not looking good, so instead of having the pukos, as some members call them or middle contact studs sideways, Märklin placed them with C-track long ways, making it less noticable. I can't see the reason for it because it is still 3 rail and whether you can notice it 100% or 75 %, to me is irrelevent.
or it could be saving money, less metal, anyhow there are solutions how to minimize the noise.
you can inclose the C-track with cork around it but than you loos your track bed, you can put cork underneath the track and it will help a bit.
I've noticed the excessive noise right from the start and being familiar with Roco pick up shoes I've decided to try one. they call themm silent sliders and true to their word it is much quiter.
Other than that, well would you like to cahnge to K -track ? after all this

John

Michel, All,

On our AMC (Auckland Marklin Club) modules which have C Track on plywood roadbed mostly we found the noise a problem. Firstly we tried Noch foam C track underlay 99409 and whist it made a difference, it was still far from ideal, and that product is no longer available anyway. One of our members hit the nail on the head by also adding stripps of cork up under the C Track, to fill the cavity which actually acts as a sound amplifier we found, and that reduced the noise by a further margin. Later same member and myself were assisting an elderly gentleman with the build of his new Marklin C Track layout, photos of which appeared on this forum a few years ago

This layout is on a large flat plywood table the owner built, then layers of polystyrene foam were laid and sculptured to form the ground, piles of it in places to form Mountains ! All this done by a DCC two rail friend of the owner's, much to our frustration when we came to try and make the layout function !! He, Rob had some Woodland Scenics foam track underlay whcih I think was really designed as a road bed alternative to cork for K Track and the like on sleepers (Ties). However it's raised part nicely filled the C Track cavity with a small bit protruding under each side of the C Track base. Where this is installed on the layout the trains run considerably, even acceptably quieter, than on any other C Track solution I have seen/heard.

(We need to see if Woodlands still have that product available and make it the new standard for our AMC modules )

So Michel I recommend you investigate the Woodlands Scenic Foam track underlay !

Hi Michel,

If you run trains on C track on, say a tiled floor, you realise that it is in fact very quiet. Most of the noise is usually produced by reverberation in the wooden baseboard.

When I first set up my tracks on my plywood base, the noise was not very noticeable. I screwed the track down and the following day I ran trains again. I was shocked at how much louder it had become! I realised thet the screws were acting as sound conductors and transmitting the vibrations to the plywood, which was acting as a sounding board. I took out most of the screws, leaving only about 1 per metre. The noise became a lot more acceptable.

You don't mention if you have used screws to hold the track down, but if you have, try taking most of them out.

BTW, if you listen to a real train going past at speed from a distance of about 100 metres, you realise that the noise of the wheels on the track is a lot louder than the noise of the locomotive.

I most use the cork sheet under the C-tracks and running quite by about 70%.

If long passenger/freights running bit noise.

Hi Michel,

I like to listen to music while running my trains, so I use K-track glued onto cork roadbed with no additional ballast. It doesn't look as realistic, but is very quiet. The cork is mounted to a layer of styrofoam, so there is pretty good insulation from the baseboard. Here in the US, cork roadbed is readily available and cheap. I ordered a roll of the unballasted Noch foam roadbed to experiment with, and found that to be very quiet, too, but more difficult to use when compared to cork. It is very flimsy. Also, it was alot more expensive than cork. So my solution is a compromise. I put a lot of effort into weathering the rails and crossties with multiple colors to help everything visually blend together, so I think it looks OK. Like Harald (Witzlerh), I don't like high-frequency noise, either. I sometimes think that the problem with C-track (and M-track, too) is that the rigid roadbed acts a reflector of the sound waves generated by the wheels. The open-cell foam of the Noch roadbed absorbs the sound waves instead of reflecting them back. Unballasted K-track does the same thing - the exposed crossties are like sound baffles to break up the sound waves. I have heard of modelers using ground foam as ballast in the quest to reduce noise, but I have not seen this in person, so I don't know how effective it is. I would encourage you to experiment a bit before committing to any track system if noise is an important factor to you.

Hi Michel,

The best way you will reduce the noise is by laying the track directly onto polystyrene foam. If you ballast a little over the edges of each side of the roadbed it will be sufficient to hold the track in place. Ultimately what you need to achieve with any track type, is a minimal rigid connection between the track and your baseboard as this is what transmits the vibrations eg the screws.

I personally use K track with Merkur underlay (No longer available) and have had good results. Peco do a pre-ballasted under lay for their code 100 track, but I don't know if it is compatible with K track. For the C track, polystyrenne would be my choice.

Cheers...

Mike.

Oh but I did Glen! The polystyrene can be used and works extremely well, but you do need to plan it out for where you want to run wires. Yes it is meesy working with the polystyrene, but nothing that cant be cleaned up easily.

Cheers....

Mike.

Hello all

my layout is temporarily and is build on a table with 6mm thick wood plates. I was on a train show last weekend and saw from Woodland Scenic this material were they ran the track on. In the catalog it is called RISERS. Its a kind of polystyrene. Is this what you guys already talking about?
I have some of them coming as incline sets.
I going to install them on my layout and then i have the difference between some track laying on the boards and some on the risers. I let you guys know how it sounds and if there is a difference

Greetings
Arno

Good Morning, I would like to thank everyone who has replied to this post. The plan was and still is to use C track. The alternative is for me to use K track on cork roadbed from Midwest which I have. As I'm getting my feet wet with Marklin the question I have is K track still prevalent and easy to get?

So I'm going to tack on to this old thread 4 years too late, because in my search for the topic, this thread came up from Google - so others in the future will also likely land here.

I'm starting my layout, and I plan on making it a C-Track + K-Track hybrid. I plan to use C->K/K->C transitions and use the K flextrack in straight long sections to get those very gentle angled curves and direction changes to avoid running directly parallel to the edge or to meet up with some other part where it would otherwise take a mix of a dozen other track bits. I plan to use the C-track where I want consistent and controlled layout - such as in my 5 layer helix to get up-down from the upper level to the lower main level. (I'm building a 2 level visible, + 1 hidden layer below layout).

For the c-track in the helix, to limit the grade (I'm still experimenting) I may just screw the track to the helix plywood boards - but I"m OK with that as I'll be hiding the entire helix under a mountain/terrain sculpture, that I can put some sound dampening foam on the insides of, and the only exists for sound will be 4 tunnel portals.

With the c-track and screwing, its not just the screw that transmits the sound to the base-board, but also that the screws clamp down/hold down the c-track very solidly to the baseboard, so any vibrations on the track get transmitted very efficiently from the c-track's body down the sides of the plastic ballast into the wood, which then resonates out the sound.

To address that putting some flexible foam or cork between the c-track and the wood base and not screwing in the c-track screws 100% tight will help, as the sound will then have to transmit through the foam barrier.

Additionally, the sound coming from the wood base is dependent on the dynamics of the wooden base. The more massive the base, the less sound it will resonate. So if you had much heavier wood, it would cut down on the noise signature some. One can screw on some heavier materials in larger open expanses, for example, to change the 'speaker dynamics' of that flat surface, as well as attach some cheap sound deadening foam to the underside of the wood as well. I'll be trying out some of these as I build my layout up over the coming years.

I like the idea of filling the void under the c-track with sound absorbing material as that will limit the vibration to only what transmits down via the plastic roadbed sides, and what radiates directly up.

I imagine some of the high frequency noise could be coming from the track rails directly - radiating out, and that loosening up the mounting of the track to a solid object would allow the track to vibrate and move a bit more and not produce as much high frequency. Now I'm out on a limb though. I wonder how well very cheap poly-fill batten (like for pillows) would work under the track, if not some open cell foam that is precut or can be cut with a hot-wire cutter to size. I know that Märklin of Sweden used a type of IKEA carpet-anti-skid material on his layout.. .I'll see what my local IKEA has, but know many folks don't have an IKEA nearby (I do like the idea of inexpensive and sustainably sourced material ).

At this point, I've got my 5 layer helix and the 120 R1 and R2 track segments to make the 2 rail concentric circles and will hook it up to my table top double-oval once it gets here in April 2016.

I use 2mm thick cork. the type of rolls that you can get in hardware stores, used for wall decoration and/or as underlay for carpets. I staple and glue strips of cork onto 12mm plywood ramps/plates, and then fasten the K-track with screws. The whole thing is then ballasted with real stone/sand and white glue, and is quite solid and hard once finished.

The opinion of -and discomfort from- the sound of the trains running are certainly subjective considerations. I love the sound that comes from this setup, but then again I grew up with older M-tracks and tinplate rolling stock rattling along...

I clearly hear the screeching of metal flanges against the rails, and also the hundreds of "dadum-dadum"s of wheels passing the joints of every rail segment. The motor-noise is just a very low "humm" in the background. IMHO motor-noise from the locos will often emmit directly from the motorized unit itself, rather than being amplified through the base of the layout.
The interior design of the motorized unit is (IMHO again) much more important in this case. The ROCO locos tend to be much better in this aspect. -at least when comparing 10-15 year old models. (My latest M-model is the E150, which is certainly dead-quiet, I admit it! ;-)