As I further plan out of my new layout, track price always comes up as a barrier between me, and starting a layout. I was wondering what steps are involved in hand laying, range of difficulty, and things like that…
Thanks.
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:
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Use good tools.
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Use the right size spikes.
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Use two or more track gauges.
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Sand your ties evenly prior to adding rail.
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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!
Thanks for all the help guys. This definitely clears a lot of things up for me. Are there any sites online that are better than others for buying the materials needed?
Austin,
Take a look at the following site: http://www.handlaidtrack.com/ho.php
They have supplies, as well as the jigs that Bob talked about.
Tom
Thanks for the link. All I can find however is turnouts. Though I will need to handlay turnouts, I can’t seem to find anything about laying curves and straight track.
Yes, most of it is going to be turnouts. Austin, if you have high-speed Internet, Fast Tracks has videos that you can view online:
http://www.handlaidtrack.com/documents.php
One of the ones near the bottom has on spiking. I don’t know if that only includes spiking turnouts (or just spiking in general) but that might help you get more of a feel for what you can expect from handlaying track. Eventually, I want to handlay my own track and turnouts.
Austin, you may also want to do a Google search on “handlaying track”. I thought I had a link bookmarked but I guess I don’t. I’m sure there is a good web site or two on the topic. I may even look myself and see what I can find…
Tom
Hmm. Well I think I can live with that. Is 1.99 a fair price for a 36’’ piece of code 100 flex track? The last time I purchased some was 4-5 years ago, when the local store sold it at ridicuously low prices.
Here’s a start:
http://www.gatewaynmra.org/handlaid.htm
http://www.lauriegreen.net/Track%20Lay/tracklay.htm
Tom
Well, thanks. That helped a bunch. I’ve now made the decision to only hand lay my turnouts, and buy flex track in bulk. My layout I am building is rather large so buying a case of flex track at 1.39 a piece doesn’t sound that bad.
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.
This might be a good way to get your feet wet with handlaying, to see whether you like it or not. But if you decide to hand lay all your track, I think it will wind up costing far more money than buying just rail. Since rail is generally sold in 99 foot lots ( 33 pieces, each 3 feet long ) there’s no easy way to get a small trial quantity of a few feet . But bulk rail ( 99 feet at a time ) is cheaper than stripping the rail from flex track.
-Ed
I might have to try that. It does indeed sound like a good idea, and if I do end up buying the case of 100 pieces of flex track, then I think I’ll go ahead and give it a try.
My LHS sells MicroEngineering rail by the piece… I am sure some others do as well. It is pretty cheap… Just ask.
Brian
Before you handlay track, I suggest you cost out the rail, ties, and spikes for a 3 foot section of track vs a piece of flex track. HO code 83 3ft flex run from $3.50 to $6.98. Handlaid using 21" centers with 4 spikes per tie is about $10.54 ($9.08 if you buy supplies in bulk). These are list prices (from Walthers for flex and FastTrack for handlaid supplies) you may be able to do better at discount internet sites for both flex and supplies. Still hand laid is more expensive. If you glue instead of spiking you can cut costs to $5.69 ($4.85) plus cost of glue. Spiking every 5th tie as some advocate gets costs down to $6.67 ($5.70). While there are many benefits to handlaid, cost is not one of them except for turnouts - there you can save money (except maybe Lifelike on a good sale).
Enjoy
Paul
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.
It’s really the sameold argument again - IF i was doign actual paid work for clients, sure, my time would make that hour it takes to make a Fastracks turnout not worth it - I oculd work 45 minutes an dspend 15 minutes buying commercial turnouts and still come otu ahead monetarily.
However - this is HOBBY TIME specifically set aside for leisure activity. As such, the lower cost makes the hobby hours per dollar ratio go way up. Why buy a $10 kit when you can buy the same thing for $15 RTR? Because fir $15 I get less tan 5 minutes of hobby time opening the box and putting it on the track. For $10 I get an hour or so hobby time, a better bargain all around.
Sorta like playing the slots. Of course I don’t win, in the end the money’s gone. But I cna put a twenty in a nickle machine and play for an hour or so - cheap entertainment!
–Randy
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)