I have a medium sized layout that was laid down in partly October of last year and then in March of this year. It’s all brass track and it’s laid on ladder trackbed–a combination of trex, Home Depot “tuf-board” and some other PVC product home depot sells which has no name. We live across the river from Washington DC. Winters are usually mild but we get nights in the teens and 20s. For the last three days it’s been in the very high 90s and humid. We hit 101 on Sunday
i’ve never had a garden railway up all year before. I laid the track in cool months and didn’t bother to leave space between the track sections–in fact, I closed them up as tight as I could. I expected trouble from track expansion, but 3 days in the high 90s made little or no change. In fact, I have one place where there’s a pretty big gap between the track sections. I expected it to close up, but it stayed the same.
It looks like the PVC/trex roadbed maybe expanded at the same rate as the track? Or close enough so that we dodged any problems? The track is tied to the ladder roadbed with screws and nails, but it’s not very tightly tied for the most part–there are lots of places where you can move the track easily