Hmmm. This discussion has gotten very interesting.
Whenever I stand within 100 feet of a passing train, the ground rumbles, the wheels clatter and the rails sing. It is very loud, almost deafening, and it is what makes trains exciting.
So, for all of the folks who are high sticklers for realism, why all of the massive efforts to suppress the sounds of your the trains? To me at least, that makes it very unrealistic.
When a real train passes, can you hear the voices of the men inside, or all of the other dozens of little sounds or noises that may come with all of the latest computer chip command control engines? Nope. I lived two blocks from a trainyard in Memphis for about 3 months, and I heard all of those sounds from real engines and cars, but only when they were traveling at a crawl through the switching yard.
Foam track bed on heavily glued and screwed plywood is what I have, and it dampened the "hollow drum" sound enough to be realistic for me.
So, are you building your table top beds with highly suppressed sound for realism? Or, to accommodate all of the sound features of the engines you are buying? (Which kinda seems backwards to me.)
Just something to think about.
To each his own of course.
Mannyrock
