Much track laying today .............. until I ran out of ballast
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The method used was to dig a shallow trench, line it with weed membrane, fill said trench with my version of Rowlands Mixture (equal parts sand, cement and ballast - I didn't bother putting any peat in) and lay the track nice and flat (no real inclines on this railway). Next job was to dampen the lot with water from a garden atomizer, the fact that it them rained gently didn't hurt either.
Laying membrane is no guarantee that you won't get any weeds. Our front garden is almost totally gravel on top of membrane, but it still needs the occasional weeding as certain plants actually grow on top of the membrane, usually when their seeds are airborne or have been dropped by birds. However, one of the problems I had with the old Gooey station was with worm casts. In fact, the station had only been used for storing stock for months before it's demise due to this problem. The membrane should at least prevent it.
The track isn't attached to anything, it is just held (lightly) in place by the ballast. Of course this is quite realistic, but the main reason I've used this method because I know from experience that the made up ground in the new bed WILL definitely sink after a while. The made up ground under Wetton is still sinking (very slowly now) nearly 4 years after I built it. At least using this method I'll just have to take out the odd piece of track, shove in a new layer of ballast and put the track back over any areas that do sink.
Next job will be (when I've bought another couple of bags of ballast) to join the last couple of pieces of track together and trim the membrane back. Then it will all need testing
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