Not much to it. Good eye, steady hand, pliers, a couple of track gauges, soldering iron, and lots of patience. I too hand-layed track years ago when I was in school due to lack of funds. I still handlay the odd-ball custom trackwork, the steady hand and eyes are gone.
It's not as complicated as it appears and there are plenty of articals in the back issues of MR to help you get started.
I just glue the ties to the roadbed, (don't use foam) with contact cement. Center the rail with the track gauges. Kadee has nice ones with a center pointer. Slowly spike down at a 60 degree angle, offsetting the spikes a little on the tie. Do this a couple of thousand more times and you'll have a few feet of track. Did I mention patience?
Give it a try. At the very least it will sharpen your skills and you will find it quite a rewarding experience.
Tom.
To be honest, at present there is little to choose, in price, between laying (the least-expensive, bought at a discount or on sale) flex track and laying raw rail on wood ties - for ordinary "two rails on standard ties" track. The big opportunity for savings comes where one track becomes two (or three, or four...) Specialwork built from raw rail on wood ties costs about the same as the same length of rail laid as single-track flex.
There are special jigs made for hand-laying track, but for someone on a really tight budget they are rather pricey. The only tools I use are an NMRA gauge, two three-point track gauges, rail-cutting pliers, needle-nose pliers, a 10" flat file, a (very) light hammer, a nail set and a soldering gun. A good, stiff straightedge is also invaluable for laying straight track straight, especially on the straight sides of turnouts.
If you have never hand layed track before, you WILL mess up, at least at first. Don't let that discourage you. Just pull off the out-of-tolerance pieces and re-lay them - they all recycle! (If a piece of turnout or specialwork rail turns out less than wonderful, make a new one. You can recycle the original as guard rails or points.)
Once you get the hang of it, there is nothing more rewarding than looking at some real puzzle palace specialwork and thinking, "I built that!" The fact that you saved enough to add another freight train to the roster is just a bonus.
Chuck (who connects hand-laid specialwork with Atlas flex)
The hardest part of hand laid track by far are the turnouts. However, building turnouts by hand has gottten a whole lot easier today by means of the track laying jigs available. The way I learned to hand lay my track was thru trail and error. In other words, my first attempts were done on a seperate piece of scrap wood. I built around 4 practice ones before I felt confident enough to attempt the real thing. One technique that has worked for me, was using "full size" paper templates. The track can be assembled directly over them. This makes it easier to see where all your components will go (frog, points, guard rail, ect...) Just remember to use a NMRA track gauge to insure everything is gauged properly. Central Valley (web site) offers free HO turnout templates, including crossovers, that can be downloaded from your computer. If your lucky enough to find a "Kadee Spiker" you can spike your rails two to three times as fast as you can by hand. But not any better. That part comes from being careful to insure that your track goes down smooth and straight. Handlying track can be a bit fustrating at first. But once you get the knack of it, you can move along fairly quickly. As far as saving money goes. That depends on how big your layout will be. The start up cost of obtaining the necessary tools, rails, spikes, ties, soldering iron, ect... can run between $150.00 to $250.00 for a 4 x 8. However, once this investment is made, the cost to hand lay a turnout will be around $3.50. (price does not include switch machines, as these can vary in price and size)
The key tips to follow are:
- Use good tools.
- Use the right size spikes.
- Use two or more track gauges.
- Sand your ties evenly prior to adding rail.
- And last but not least, work slowly.
In the end, you'll have track that looks as good (or better) then ready made for a whole lot less!
Have Fun.... Bob.
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
Here's a thought:
Buy your flex track like you plan, but remove the rails, and re-lay them on wooden ties. This way you'll be able to match your track with your hand-laid turnouts. IMO, the best part of hand laid track is the realistic appearance of the wooden ties. Once stained, the ties take on a look that is difficult to match with plastic (flex track) ties, even when painted.
Bob grech wrote:Here's a thought: Buy your flex track like you plan, but remove the rails, and re-lay them on wooden ties. This way you'll be able to match your track with your hand-laid turnouts. IMO, the best part of hand laid track is the realistic appearance of the wooden ties. Once stained, the ties take on a look that is difficult to match with plastic (flex track) ties, even when painted.
Five out of four people have trouble with fractions. -AnonymousThree may keep a secret, if two of them are dead. -Benjamin Franklin "You don't have to be Jeeves to love butlers, but it helps." (Followers of Levi's Real Jewish Rye will get this one) -Ed K "A potted watch never boils." -Ed Kowal If it's not fun, why do it ? -Ben & Jerry
My LHS sells MicroEngineering rail by the piece.... I am sure some others do as well. It is pretty cheap... Just ask.
Brian
FJ and G wrote:THe original post indicated that the reason for doing turnouts is cost.It would be much quicker to do some pizza delivery rather than handlay track. It takes time and patience, esp. for the first several. You could quickly earn enough money in a short part-time job to buy all the turnouts you need.You do turnouts b/c you love handlaying tracks (labor of love). You don't do it to save $$$.
Agree and disagree. If you are making a lot of turnouts, you can save money. With the FastTracks fixtures it takes about an hour, and you end up with a much nicer than store bought turnout for a lot less than a store bought one costs. I figure that if I can build one or two a week during periods we are "working on the railroad", I can keep up, have good turnouts, and save money.
Jeff But it's a dry heat!
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
FJ and G wrote:THe original post indicated that the reason for doing turnouts is cost. You do turnouts b/c you love handlaying tracks (labor of love). You don't do it to save $$$.
You do turnouts b/c you love handlaying tracks (labor of love). You don't do it to save $$$.
In my case, you do specialwork because it's less of a hassle to hand-lay than it is to try to cut-and-fit commercial products (which don't come in the frog angle I prefer) into a station throat where two tracks widen out to six, involving five double slips, a half-dozen other turnouts, a crossing, precisely located gaps (for detection and DC control)... Believe me, that really does save a fistful of dollars.
Not to mention that I'm too old to be delivering pizza.
Chuck (who still uses flex for plain-vanilla track)
It depends on whether your goal is to maximize stuff obtained for your hobby $$ or maximize your productive hours of hobby time per $.
In the 1st case, cost of stuff is the bottom line because operation of the layout is the goal. Pleasure in building the layout is secondary to costs and to operation. This is a viewpoint that supports the current RTR and discount markets. This viewpoint also (unintentionally) devalues the fun of constructing a layout.
The 2nd case favors kit building and hand laying track because they are considered fun activities in and of themselves with the benefit of reducing your cost per hour of model railroading. If you focus on model building (rolling stock, scenery, structures, and TRACK are are all legitimate subjects for modeling), your cost per hour will be way less because of your labor of love, but you will also build far less layout in a given number of hobby hours.
There are significant numbers of model railroaders in both groups, although you would never know it reading MR and RMC. Manufacturing, advertising, and industry media concentrate on the 1st group because that's where more of the money is. RTR and the attendant bigger layouts bring in more $$ than a person like me who handlays track, builds less than 10 locomotives in his lifetime, owns less than 30 cars, and has never had a layout bigger than 4x8 (yet).
Yes, even though flex track is comparable in cost to handlaid, I prefer the flow of my handlaid track where you cannot tell where the turnouts begin and end. Like Chuck, my turnouts curve as desired to make my track flow as one.
my thoughts, your choices
Fred Wright
in foggy coastal Oregon where it's always 1900