"Just my .02 If you are going to add ballast and scenery, SAVE YOUR MONEY!"--excellent point.
There are a lot of good points here in this topic. We strive for sound abatement. But why? I just used a putty knife to scrape off my old layout's scenic material from my raw plywood that served me well and it broke my heart. I never thought my old way was especially noisy -- perhaps because of the mass on top of the layout -- as David says. My new layout has 1/2" plywood, 1/2 foam" and 1/2" homasote road bed. I wonder if that extra money, labor and material is really worth it. I like the foam base because I can reuse a lot of the scenery if we move again. I have some foam scenery that I used before and I will reuse now -- like my foam mountains.
When we moved into our new home and I built my new basement train room I used fiberglass insulation in my walls, roxul sound insulation above acoustic ceiling tiles, and purposely decided to not install heating vents. I've added rugs on the tiled concrete floors to help reduce sound and protect my trains in case my bridges are up. Yet when I am running trains I have digital sounds and I have to turn up my air purifier full loud level to keep smoke from leaving the the room to protect my wife's lungs. I guess the answer lies in what your end goal is and who lives with you.
If I were a bachelor living alone, I would choose no sound abatement. I would open the train room door, play Van Morrison's Live at the Grand Opera House Belfast at full volume on my sound system, turn up the smoke unit, turn up the roar of my steam engines and diesels, push my whistle and horn and bell buttons relentlessly, cocktail in hand, and let the trains run!
Sound abatement is my compromise to enjoy my trains without keeping my wife and daughter from going mad and allowing them to sleep at night while I enjoy my trains. Perhaps dampening the noise from the trains in the room help when you want to run your trains in quiet mode for you, too.
Mike
