With all six tracks now in place inside Carhouse Seven at OERM (yard not hooked up yet however), we are at the point where we must select a material to put down on the floor. We've already spent our concrete budget, and do have nice wide concrete walkways along the sides (indoor parts storage), as well as cross walks front, middle and rear of the building. However, we don't have the budget to fill in the rest of the floor area with concrete or asphalt. The building is not intended for public access, by the way.

In our Carhouse Four, the floor is just crushed rock (smaller than ballast). However, this doesn't work well for driving a forklift or pickup truck on, and its not a good walking surface. It does solve the dust problem, however.

Short of concrete or asphalt walkways, what have other people used successfully for a floor surface inside carbarns? Our native soil is way too fine (dusty) so we need to put something down. We do need to be able to drive over it occassionally, and it would be nice to drive a manlift on it to be able to change light bulbs on the ceiling.

Thanks!

http://www.oerm.org/pages/Carhouse%20Seven.html

I am not sure what the savings would be, but I suggest you take a look at recycled crushed asphalt.

would wood chips be good? they are absorbent, easy to walk on etc.

You might want to look at "screenings" or "fines", which is basically the stuff under 5/8-1/2" from rock crushing plants. It's also called "road mix" or "item 4". This stuff drains and compacts very well, and gives a good surface to run rubber-tired vehicles on. It does need to be wet down to achive proper compaction and settlement. RMNE has just used a lot of this for our parking area and roadbed under new track at our shop yard.

We have also had good results with the reclaimed asphalt ("road grindings"), which is usually pretty cheap.

Howard P.

A similiar option would be to try recycled concrete. I've not used it indoors, but have used it outdoors and it compacts very well and creates a nice solid base.