What do you do? hand lay or buy your track[?]
Buy track. I have no time to handlay track…
I buy. I don’t have the time, patience, or willpower to try and handlay all my track (funny, but I seem to work up the willpower to superdetail steam…). Besides, modern flextrack (especially Micro Engineering) looks better than any handlaid track.
I do envy modelers who do handlay, and as such aren’t limited to commercial track geometry. Every once in awhile, I plan myself into a corner, and have to rethink an entire town or junction, just because I can’t find ready-to-lay pieces that will work!
Buy. No time to hand lay. Way, way too much track to even think about hand laying. It would take years to do.
Would be great as hand laid track looks beautiful. (Check out Tony Koester’s track work on his Allegheny Midland. Incredible!
In my case:
Performing maintenance on locomotive mechanical parts.
Upgrading some locomotives with Mashima motors in prepartion for DCC/Sound.
Converting freight & passenger cars to metal wheels and Kadee couplers.
Removing the roof walks off of Athearn boxcars and reefers: Then filling in the holes, sanding and painting.
Don’t see myself handlaying on my upcoming layout. I’m going to go with buying Code 83 “ready made track”. The new Peco “American style” looks good! If the price is right I may try it out instead of the Atlas Code 83.
10-4!
Even Pelle Soeborg (MR July 2004) doesn’t handlay track. He uses Microengineering’s flex track. The ME track looks better when photographed.
Mostly I use Shinhora code 100 flex track and turnouts. But I handlay to fill certain gaps and plan to handlay sidings in code 83 - this is S scale. The narrow gauge - Sn2 willl use HOn3 Shinhora turnouts and ME flex track.
Enjoy
Paul
I’ve done both, but have to admit that the time and effort don’t really seem worth it given the quality of ready made track these days. Turnouts would be the only thing I would consider hand laying, both from a geometry and cost perspective.
My present layout has code 100 flex and commercial switches. Any new layout will use code 83 flex/commercial switches. I did build a layout once that had hand laid code 70. I even built the turnouts(14)! They all worked fine, but I put about 6 months of evenings into those 14 turnouts and about 80 ft of track. I then looked at Shinohara code 70 and made up my mind real fast. The plastic track has all the tieplate detail and is not affected by humidity. The next layout used Shinohara code 70. My present layout uses Atlas code 100/Customline Mark III trackage - Over 120 sticks of flex & 43 turnouts and it runs great(started it in 1987). I airbrushed ‘weathered black’ on the sides of the rail before ballasting and this really makes the rail look smaller.
Jim Bernier
I find buying track easier.