Track underlay and carpet running

[Sad Sprinter]

I no-longer have a baseboard to run my trains on, sadly, but I am itching to give my trains a good run seeing as they've been in storage for 7 years. I want to set up a temporary layout on my bedroom floor (carpet), but well aware of the damage carpet can cause to model trains. Would the ballast underlay be any use in protecting the trains from carpet fluff? Or is there any other product or material I could use to put underneath the rails?

 

[Cowley]

I no-longer have a baseboard to run my trains on, sadly, but I am itching to give my trains a good run seeing as they've been in storage for 7 years. I want to set up a temporary layout on my bedroom floor (carpet), but well aware of the damage carpet can cause to model trains. Would the ballast underlay be any use in protecting the trains from carpet fluff? Or is there any other product or material I could use to put underneath the rails?

I suppose the underlay would help a bit but it would be quite hard to keep in place wouldn’t it? Definitely avoid getting fluff in the mechanisms though as it’s a real pain to get out later.
What about some card underneath it like this:


That’s just an old pizza box I’ve ripped up. You could easily trim them and tape it together to stop it moving around.

 

[Sad Sprinter]

I suppose the underlay would help a bit but it would be quite hard to keep in place wouldn’t it? Definitely avoid getting fluff in the mechanisms though as it’s a real pain to get out later.
What about some card underneath it like this:
View attachment 76309

That’s just an old pizza box I’ve ripped up. You could easily trim them and tape it together to stop it moving around.

Thanks! I'll give that a go, should have some card lying around here somewhere.

 

[John Webb]

My earliest paid job was to service Triang locos for a local dealer. (He had expanded from cycles in which he was expert to models, including model trains, in which he was not.) Nine times out of ten the fault was carpet fluff entangled in some part of the mechanism which had caused poor running or stopped the model working altogether. So I don't recommend running on carpets. Cowley's idea of cardboard would be a lot better, but I'd go for a large corrugated cardboard box opened up to give you a reasonably level surface. (And which might be foldable to save storage

space?)​