Q: How to lay track?

A couple of points about the MD Camper Seal tape.

1. It does dampen the sound of trains.
2. The sound dampening quality will be gone once you ballast the track. Matte Medium will mitigate this some because it dries rubbery but the noise level will go up.

Bottom line ---- any roadbed, once ballasted transfers sound to whatever it is connected to and it all becomes a sound board.

My big question is why do you want quiet trains? I have been watching trains for over 50 years and I have not seen a quiet one yet.

 

I guess you have a good point...they're no such things as quiet trains. I'm not sure why I want them to run quiet. It just seems like the best layouts I've seen ran so much more quiet than anything I've ever ran. I had a friend who (in the early 90's) put a 4x8 sheet of cork on the top of his table and then put cork roadbed on top of that. I thought it was great for quiet, smooth operation...but if I remember correctly, he didn't plan on painting it so as not to lose the acoustical properties. I wanted my table top green so I painted it.
In the end, I know I'm gonna want to change up the layout so I think I'll end up just putting down a 2"-wide gray stipe of paint to give a visual illusion of ballast for now. That way, if I re-route, all I have to do is re-paint in a few places. I know it won't look as realistic. I may change my mind and put down ballast later on. I'm also going to paint asphalt and concrete for auto traffic.