I was talking to an older gentlemen about our railroad fleets. He does not belong to these forums. He handlays all of his track. I told him that I don’t have a layout and use sectional track on the floor to get my “train fix.”
He told me that our locomotives and rolling stock are like expensive sport cars. They feel every little bump. He said that hand laid track is like a superhighway and that sectional track is like a well used gravel road.
What do you think?
I am still looking for wash boarded places on my sectional track.[:D]
look at the logic involved. on the real railroads most track problems were at the rail joints. the more joints you have, the more potential trouble spots. why do you think they went to welded rail?
i don’t hand lay track but i never use sectional track either. i think that once you have a bit of practice laying flex-track you will never go back to the short sections again.
of course, some people really enjoy laying rail on individual ties and good for them. to me it would be like cutting the lawn with a pair of nail clippers.
'Tis a conundrum. If I had the patience and talent, I’d probably lay my own track (my late cousin did and it was incredible). Without that talent and patience, I will say that most of my Yuba River Sub is flex-track.
Most.
There is one very ‘dangerous’ section of my layout that surmounts a floor to ceiling mountain pass, and the drop is about six actual feet from track to cement garage floor. I frankly did not trust my flex-track expertise (such as it is), and instead went to Bachmann EZ wide-radius (36") track for the almost horseshoe curve that surmounts the pass. EZ track comes with its own self-locking roadbed. I first removed the EZ connectors and replaced them with Atlas, then after locking the track in place, soldered the sections together. The section is about 12’ of actual trackage, considering the horseshoe curve and the straight sections in between, and it’s been in place for about seven years. No problems with derailments or electrical dips. Works perfectly. Smooth as silk.
BUT: I worked that section like crazy for about two weeks both prior to and actually laying it, testing every little section and every little ‘tweak’ in the rail connections to make sure that there would be absolutely NO bumps or clicks or problems with that particular section. In that time, of course, I could have laid the track with sectional in about two hours. And worried about a disasterous derailment to the cement floor ever after, LOL!
It worked for me, it might not work for anyone else.
However, I do agree with your friend: raw sectional track can be pretty much like a gravel road, unless you take a HECK of a lot of care laying it.
Lets look at a simple 18" radius sectional track circle. 12 pices of track, 24 track joiners (to come apart) and 48 mecanical electrical connections (to get weaker over time)…all of which can go wrong.
If you lay the same circle with flex track…3 pieces of track, 6 track joiners, 12 mecanical electrical connections…much less can go wrong.
The trade off is the flex is harder to work with, but the end result is a more reliable, enjoyable experience…unless, of course, you love rerailing and crimping your rail joiners.
If you can hand-lay track and turnouts - great, if flex-track is your thing, why not? If your are happy with sectional track, that´s perfectly fine.
It is not the type of track you use, it is the care you have to exercise while laying it, that gives you the reliability. Hand-laid track maybe the super highway, but when you are not perfect at it, it will be just a nightmare.
Btw, I hope you don´t run your trains on a carpeted floor, do you?
Mostly no. They are not directly on the carpet. If they are, it is only during Christmas time when there is a large circle of track under my tree. Most of the time the trains under the tree are of lesser quality.
I disagree with the gravel road analogy - sounds like elitism to me. Having handlaid track, used flex and sectional, I find that all types can work well and all types need to be laid with care. But the physics doesn’t scale down and model railroads don’t lay track the same way the prototype does.
Our problems are different. The chief disadvantage of sectional is lack of easements although you can fake it a little. The chief disadvantage of handlaid is the details, spikes and tie plates - including them and getting them to scale, a lot of land laid track doesn’t even spike every tie . The chief disadvantage of flex is the joints especially on curves.
But all these problems can be solved and you can mix types using whatever works best in each situation. I use whichever seems best for what I am trying to do.
I’m not too sure about the ‘elitism’ part—having grown up in a rural part of the country I kinda liked those gravel roads[:)] But I do agree with you about the rest. I really don’t know why using any approach would become an issue. I’ll use whatever means I’ve got to make the layout work—sectionals come in handy in areas that are a bit awkward to handlay—back tracks and such—I like my handlaid up front where I could see it—using bifocals with N scale track, handlaying is not fun if it is being done at the back[:-^]. Hence sectionals are a little quicker----not so hard on the back too[^]
I’ve used both sectional and flex. Sectional works good for the beginner- you get an idea of rail joiners and how curves are set up and that- radii. Flex works better in the aspect it gives a better fluidiity of one piece to the next- both operational and visual.
I don’t think I’ll ever get into handlaying track, but who knows what lies in the future?
For now it’s flex. All track has to be carefully installed to work properly, sloppy handlaying is no better than sloppy sectional track except in looks, and we’re talking track here, so looks only count AFTER it is proven to be reliable and smoothly laid.
Unless you’re making a diorama or static display for photo shoots, reliability is the main concern, looks are secondary.
I have used sectional track to extend the back end of a stub-ended staging yard instead of cutting up new 3 ft. sections of flex when I only needed an extra 15" or so.
. No loco will be travelling to these sections, so all I needed was a little more physical trackage and no electrical connections were necessary and I don’t care what it looks like.
I prefer flex to sectional because of fewer joints, etc but I happen to be modeling a yard right now that is almost all jointed rail on the prototype so I’m using sectional track for that. I’ll have to look at some industrial spurs around here to see what they use - I’d think jointed rail but I guess that could be called “rivet counting”.
The Kato N Scale Unitrack is bullet proof as far as “snap” track goes…I had my doubts about using “glorified” snap tack until I got my M2 Master set and sit up a test loop on the floor(way to old for that-hard time getting up LOL!) and had no problems after 5 hours of constant running-some was unattended running to boot…
My take on sectional track is that it closely resembles an early concrete road - the kind with expansion joints every ten yards or so, no vertical alignment pins between slabs and a little ridge of squeezed-out asphalt at every joint.
My take on hand-laying everything is that it’s really nice - if you have a LOT of time and nothing better to do with it. OTOH, the inner rivet counter cringes at the lack of tie plates, even on track laid with four spikes per tie. And then, I don’t believe anyone has come up with a method for hand-laying concrete ties…
My personal preference, driven by the concrete ties used by my chosen prototype, is to carefully lay all ‘plain Jane’ track with good quality flex track, then hand-lay all of my specialwork. My prototype laid specialwork on wood ties, and so do I.
My take on sectional track is that it closely resembles an early concrete road - the kind with expansion joints every ten yards or so, no vertical alignment pins between slabs and a little ridge of squeezed-out asphalt at every joint.
Hmmm I always thought snap track was more like jointed rail…[;)]
I have built 2 small(1’ x 7 ') ISLs using snap switches and track because I didn’t want to cut several pieces of flex.
On my current layout, which I consider my testing ground for all modelling stuff, I used mix of section tracks and flex. I learned a lot about joining flex track on this layout, so future track laying will be flex all the way, or at least majority.
Handlaying - no, no for me! I really do not have time for this, and I think there are many parts of the hobby I’d try to master before handlaying track - weathering, quality landscaping, operating,…
Depends what era you are modeling. Some of you spend a lot of time on details so it would seem jointed rail and rail head size and weight would be important.When I hired out in 1979 all we had was jointed rail and the click click clicking could be a very relaxing sound . I am modeling the mid 1970s so I like hearing the rail joints on the layout. That said I plan on using mostly flex rail on my high traffic mains and jointed rail for the house tracks, hotbox set out points, and other lite industry. Its been 25 years since since I did this and this DCC is the thing. With sound I can close my eyes and almost be there again might need a vibrator pad for my stool though.
The chief disadvantage of flex track (and another disadvantage of sectional track) is the expense compared to handlaid track, and I’ll agree that handlaid track takes longer to lay…Nevertheless, a lot of flex track has spike/tie-plate detail so gross that handlaid track without that detail looks much more realistic. And unless you “have your nose in the roadbed,” lack of accurately-sized detail isn’t missed (by me, anyway.). “Sloppy” rail painting that puts color on the ties immediately adjacent to the rail does a fair representation of the spike/plate detail.
Edit - Individual spike and detail can be used on handlaid track if one has the desire, money, and time to do so.
The last time I costed out flex track vs handlaid the handlaid was more if you included all the details in the handlaid. Of course if you only spike every 5th tie and skip the tie plates you reduce the cost. How much and how accurate you want the detail is a matter of taste. If you don’t notice the spike and tie plate detail anyway then you could glue the rails to the ties and skip the spikes and tie plates altogether.
Oversized detail is not a fault of flex track per se since it is not universal.