cyclingshane73 said:
Noob Alert!!!
...and how does one go about hand laying track?
The short answer is with rail, ties, spikes, files, pliers, track gauges, and the patience to keep at it until it is right.
In 1975, when fresh out of college, married, and serving on a Coast Guard ship home-ported in Coos Bay, OR (until joining the CG I had never been west of the Mississippi), I had a $5/week model railroading budget. It's about the same as that today after adjusting for inflation.
The first two months' budget had already been blown on lumber, plywood, a sheet of Homasote (I had already learned frustration with cork roadbed), and screws for the benchwork. I wasn't going to get very far with the then very expensive nickel silver flex track and Atlas turnouts on my 4x8 layout on that amount of money. And I didn't want to use brass track after my experiences with it as a teenager. I read a Jack Work article on hand laying turnouts in the April 1963 Model Railroader that convinced me even a person of my limited skills could lay their own track. So I bought a pack of Timberline redwood ties, about 10 pieces of code 70 NS rail, some small Kemtron spikes, a pack of Campbell ballast, and 2 Kemtron 3 point gauges.
I laid the completed oval with no turnouts, and was surprised at how easy it was. I simply followed the order of construction in the article - gluing the ties and ballast first, painting the rail, sanding the tie tops, and then spiking the inner rail, and then the outer rail. The only difficulty I had was getting smooth joints on the curves, as I did not use rail joiners (as per the article), and bending the very end of the rail in a smooth curve proved very difficult. Now I would use a rail bender, and cut off the small unbent section of rail that is left. The result looked far better than the code 100 flex track of the time.
I had to move after six months in the duplex to a place where the rent was cheaper, but the second bedroom wasn't big enough to hold a 4x8. My 4x8 became a 4x6, and it was time to lay my first turnouts. Again, I followed the article, and despite my limited skills, the turnout looked far better than the Atlas CustomLine, and had no derailments either. My pride bursteth over watching my MDC Climax and six cars roll through that turnout with nary a hiccup.
Because I've always had small layouts and small budgets, the time taken to hand lay track is not a factor. I can do a complete oval with no turnouts on a 4x8 in 5 nights of 2 hour sessions, and a turnout every 2 nights. And this is completed, ballasted track with painted rail and feeders on every rail section. I am not a fast worker either. The drawback to my track's looks were no tie plates, the oversize spikes, and spikes only every 5th tie. But ties and rail were in scale unlike the Atlas code 100 flex.
Since then, I have shifted to modeling shortlines in 1900 instead of the '20s. Tie plates are not needed, and some ties could easily be rough hewn instead of sawn. Ties would not be creosoted in the Pacific NW on short lines in 1900, and code 55 rail is about right. Ballast may be dirt, rock was often limited to critical areas only. Available commercial flex track does not really duplicate this look well. I will have to use scale size spikes from Proto87, with 4 spikes per tie where it can be seen to satisfy the rivet counter in me.
On the other hand, the better looking commercial flex track does look very good if representing mainstream track practices of the 1920s and onward. It needs to be weathered. As Gary mentioned, ties should be in less than perfect alignment and length, and the gaps at joints should be filled in with correctly spaced ties. It takes a little extra effort, but consider that our track is a model, too! A model that we look at pretty close up even when the trains are not rolling over them! There are also some good looking turnouts available from Walters/Shinohara and ME that have all rail frogs, and not so obvious point hinges. Peco US code 83 may look just as good - I have not seen it myself.
Enough of my rambling. These are my thoughts, you choose what you want for your railroad.
