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My local Home Depot sells 2" pink rigid foam insulation sheets which is so popular with this forum's users, but my local Lowes only sells 2" green rigid foam insulation sheets. They appear identical except for color, but are they? For model railroading purposes of using foam insulation sheets for track underlayment covering a bench work's plywood decking, do they work equally well at deadening sound track noise? Do they work equally well for carving, cutting, and creating land formations? Do they take paint equally well? Does either the green or pink have any obvious and real advantage over the other for model railroad use?  I would likely go with the pink foam boards except I'm making a small 4x4 z/n gauge layout. Unforrunately H.D. doesn't sell 4x4 pink sheets but Lowes does have 4x4 green sheets. I need advice. What do you think?

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I started using pink foam when I was building my railroad...I would buy one sheet at a time, and more as I needed it. Well I happened to buy one sheet of the Blue foam, and it was slightly off thickness wise enough so that I had to shim it. So stick with one or the other... don't mix the two brands. That was my experience, yours may vary.

Bob

Actually the green Lowes board is Kingspan not Dow...Dow is blue. Pink is Owens Corning Foamular. Both are extruded polystyrene... and essentially the same for our purposes.  I would look into Polyisocyanurate board for scenery. Its messy, BUT imminently more wore workable.  You can shape by abrasion (with a pencil!) and its available in HUGE blocks. You might look into insulation distributors to see if the carry/fabricate the polyiso product.

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OGR Publishing, Inc., 1310 Eastside Centre Ct, Suite 6, Mountain Home, AR 72653
800-980-OGRR (6477)
www.ogaugerr.com

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