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Dave H.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Using 3 pt gauges you can slightly widen the rail on curves which can be useful on tight curves for long wheel base engines. Most folks seem to agree that doing the outer rail first is best. Since I followed that advice when I did some handlaying, I don't know what problems you have doing it the other way. For long curves you may find it helpful to solder two rails together while they are still straight. Some recommend pre bending the rail, but I never did.
Enjoy
Paul
do you want to use wooden ties or Central Valley's tie-strips, which are basically like ME flex without the rail and with a little better tie-plate detail. Also, they self-guage the rail, as well as having sighting markers so that you can make sure you are lined up on your center lines.
you can get packages of the tie-strips, which come in different spacings to represent branch or mainline track, as well as turnout kits using the CV tie-strips and the sweet Details West frogs. all for very affordable pricing... cheaper than buying flextrack, and with much much better quality control.
either way, you'll want to use a pair of 3-point track guages or a set of Railway Engineering's rollee track guages.
and if you use Code 100 or 83 rail, you'll want to use Micro Engineering's "small" spikes. For code 70, you can use the small spikes but I recommend their Micro Spikes. Micro Spikes are necessay for code 55