Action,
How big is the layout and how much time do you want to spend on the trackwork??? Which part of the hobby do you enjoy most? I like it all, but I most prefer scenery, building rolling stock and operations. Given my preferences, I won’t be doing too much handlaying of track because it takes time away from other aspects of the hobby that I enjoy more.
If you are talking realism, I think ME flextrack looks better than handlaid. Compare the spike detail in ME to handlaid and you will see what I mean. The only area I might consider handlaying would be switches. I have done some hand laying and it is very time consuming. I have a large layout and am using ME flex and a variety of switches with the goal of completing the trackwork sometime in my lifetime.
There is the old joke as far as the progression of modelers and track:
Starting with Snap track, then flextrack, on to handlaid, back to flextrack…
I built a layout thirty years ago which was 90 percent hand laid. Total mainline length of 450 feet with three yards six tracks wide at twelve feet of length average plus numerous sidings and passing tracks. With some where around sixty turnouts and a dozen or so crossovers two of these where double diamonds. This all ran fairly well but was a constant maintenance nightmare with issues like rail gaps and turn out points. Besides,this took almost three years to complete and that was without any scenery, “that’s another issue”
Any way I would advise that you use commercial turnouts and flex track for the majority of your of your endevor as and save the the hand laid for the special needs. It’s always a nice to put some fancy hand laid track work in a place where it can be viewed up front.
Yup…I’ve gone to the store many a time, come back with lots of neat things and totally forgot why I went in the first place.
As far as personal preference, I’m actually very much looking forward to laying the track myself. As a kid I did a lot of playing with legos and such, I never particularly liked large complicated pieces as I prefered to build every little part myself. I think hand-laying the track will be really fun, it’s not a necessary evil to accomplish before I can get on to the fun of running trains. My attitude is that the fun is in getting there, not just being there. There’s a good chance that as I age, move (I move every couple years it seems) and progress with my layouts I’ll get the hand-laying out of my system and want to focus on other aspects, I may very well go back to flextrack (I have about 300 feet in storage), but for now I’m very much looking forward to it.
And why shouldn’t I? I’m twenty-eight and have the run of my basement, I’m not in a hurry to get finished, and I’d love to have the experience. I’m building my layout in a pseudo-modular fashion…I want to take my benchwork with me if and when I move again, and I want to build room by room. Basically my first room will have a thirteen foot yard with mainline pass-throughs, loops at both ends with mainline turnouts off the ends of the loops so that I can extend that line into the next room in either direction as I grow the line. Right now I’m looking at laying around 200 feet of track. When I’m done with this room I’ll move on to the next room and do a different area of the country, once that track is down I’ll run in the mainline and connect the two.
Doing it this way will also help me zone the layout by room and seperately amp the track to support more trains as I expand. It’s the approach that made the most sense to me…and by putting loops at the end of each addition I can run it as a single person, or switch those loops off and gear it toward operations with several people in mi
Here are a few quick comments on the `hand laid versus flex track’ discussion.
A. There is no law that you have to do either/or. Hand-laid trackwork has its points and place. So does flex track. So,for that matter, does sectional track, if you happen to acquire some as part of a five dollar deal at a yard sale.
B. The rules that I’m working to on my current layout are:
- Hand-lay up-front trackage that will be easy for visitors to see and appreciate.
- Hand-lay all specialwork (turnouts, crossings, gantlets etc).
- Use appropriate flex track where necessary in the scene. (My prototype was changing over to concrete ties in September 1964. Has anyone ever hand-laid concrete-tie track?)
- Use flex track (and some commercial turnouts) for all hidden track, even in short tunnels. However, any puzzle track will be handlaid, since commercial components tend to take up too much valuable length.
- Sectional track (including rerailers) may be used for straight staging sidings. Otherwise, it makes a satisfactory source of short rails for conversion to points, guard rails and closure rails of hand-laid specialwork.
C. The keys to success with hand-laid track are:
- Work with your NMRA gauge in one hand, always.
- Test everything immediately, with your most derailment-prone rolling stock.
- If the test results are unsatisfactory, rebuild at once.
In the past I have hand-laid a lot of track, including some real puzzle-palace specialwork for a now-defunct club. It operated without problems for several years under a wide variety of rolling stock. (One example - a double track to six platform track passenger terminal throat that included a scissors crossover and two double slip switches.) Building that was fun. Laying tangents and simple curves really isn’t, and an airbrush can solve a lot of the lack of realism in flex track.