Thanks folks.
Belg, Scott already answered, tie plates help the spikes hold rail to the ties. If I get lucky I'll be able to take some nice close up photos of the loading dock area when I'm done. The photo etched plates came with very tiny scale spikes. I hope my end result will look like real track but we'll see.
Val, The only photos I took were the ones I posted of the castings. I went downstairs and found the mold, I have already disassembled the master. Here is a photo of the mold, with the master for the arches. I made the master for the row of bricks by cutting a lot of pieces from strip styrene with a chopper, then glued them to another strip of styrene, which was glued to a flat piece of styrene sheet, just like the arch master. I spaced them with strip wood which wouldn't get glued in the process. It was about 7" long. Then I was able to just pour as many copies as I needed. Just make a dam, I used 1/4" square styrene strip, to hold the liquid latex mold material. Obvious in the photo.