Attaching track to foamboard?

[RobertInOntario]

On my last layout, where I had unballasted track, nailed to cork, glued to foam, the train ran nice and quietly. But, add a bit of ballast and things get real noisy. I'd say my ballasted sections were twice as noisy as the unballasted but I had no problems with derailments.

Yes, I've noticed that too. Right now, the trains are fairly quiet but I'm sure they will get quite noisy after I've ballasted.

This leads into another topic (maybe I should start a new thread?) ... Is it best to solder the track joins before ballasting? because, with my older layout, I often encountered loss-of-current problems after ballasting. The glue/water mix almost certainly got into the track joins and affected the current. I'm a little leery of this happening again.

Rob