Laying Track By Hand

I've built several layouts in the past using kits for structures and flex track and pre-made turnouts to run the trains on.  For this layout I'm planning to build things from scratch as much as possible.  I have a good start with structures for the engine service terminal and the turntable already completed.  It's time now to start laying some track.

For rail I'm using Micro-Engineering O scale code 70 rail and white pine On30 ties from Mt Albert.  The dead rail layout uses 17 #5 turnouts (10 left and 7 right), 14 #6 30-21 curved turnouts (6 left and 8 right) and 1 #5 wye.  The 30-21 refers to the curve radius for the two legs of the curved turnouts.  The test track/switching puzzle in the shop uses 5 #5 straight and 3 #5 wye turnouts.  I'm using assembly fixtures to build the turnouts.  When I went to order them from Fast Tracks (click here) my original track plan called for a variety of turnouts, six different styles, and had a minimum curve radius of 18".  The assembly fixtures (jigs) are not inexpensive and this caused me to re-think my layout plan.  The 18" radius is pretty tight for some of the larger engines so I re-drew it using a minimum radius of 21".  I also re-drew the turnouts to reduce the variety as much as possible.  With a total of 44 turnouts to build using just three styles (#5 straight, #5 wye and #6 curved)  I'm saving several hundred dollars by building my own rather than buying them ready-made.  Building your own straight and curved track is more expensive than using flex track (about $3 versus $2.50 per foot) but it looks sooooo much better.  I think the total cost for track, including turnouts, is less expensive if you lay your own.  My layout uses about 210' of track with 36 turnouts.  The puzzle track uses 8 turnouts and about 35' of track.  Using ready-made track would have cost me about $1680, plus shipping.  I've spent $985 in materials, tools and jigs from Fast Tracks.  Yikes!  That alone makes it worthwhile to lay your own track but the finished product is way better too, in both looks and operation.

So I went ahead and built all the turnouts for the existing benchwork.  That includes both the layout and the test track/puzzle track in the office.  Altogether I have 16 #5, 4 wye, and 4 #6 curves.  I'm getting ready now to lay all the track in between the turnouts to tie everything together.  To do this I had to weather and stain the wood ties prior to gluing them down.  I have a bag of 1000 precut cross ties made of white pine from Mt Albert.  I also have a bag of their turnout ties but these need to be cut to length.  This is a bear of a job.

I started out with about 300 cross ties just to get me going.  In On30 scale there are 28 ties per foot.  That gives me about 10' of track to lay.  I also cut the ties for the 24 turnouts and placed them in bags by turnout style.  I'm scribing fine wood grain on the upper surface only using an old Xacto saw blade and then going back and scribing deeper grain with a hack saw blade.  Then I sand it lightly with 220 grit paper to take off the sharp edges and fluff left over from scribing.

I made up a batch of stain using a formula I got from Rusty Stumps (click here).  Basically I double his recipe to get enough stain for large quantities of wood:

40 oz water
4 tsp raw umber acrylic artists paint
2 tsp burnt umber acrylic
1 tsp black acrylic
2 tsp water soluble black drawing ink

The last time I did this (two years ago) was to get ready to build the coaling tower.  I had enough stain left over to build the water tank, sand house and turntable and still had plenty more.  I decided to make up a new batch for this project because the old batch was getting kinda ripe.

I pour enough stain into each bag to cover all the wood and let it sit for 24 hours, pinching and turning the wood through the bag occasionally to make sure everything gets stained.  For my other projects 24 hours was enough time.  For the ties I decided to go an extra 24 hours thinking they would come out darker.  I don't think it made any difference.  After soaking in stain for 48 hours I drained the stain back into my stain jug and laid out the individual ties on newspaper to dry.  It's really important to completely separate each tie or they'll stick together permanently when they dry.  For every step of this project the word "tedious" comes to mind.  This is highly repetitive work but it's also the kind of brainless work that can be done while doing other things.  I'm recording digital copies of a gigantic CD collection for my music server and writing this blog while doing my ties.  When everything dries it has a very realistic silvery grey aged wood look with slight variations of color from tie to tie.  In the end it's all worth the effort.  The picture below is what I'm striving for, maybe a little less aged.  This was done by Bob R., a cohort on the Free Rails Forum (click here).

After staining and gluing down over 500 ties I decided I didn’t need the level of detail shown in the picture above.  For me, that might be the way to go for any track that is right under your nose but most of mine is set back and wouldn’t merit the time needed to achieve that look.

My modeling shop is in the next room down the hall from the layout.  I have a desk and workbench in one corner of the room and decided to build a test track on a shelf above the workbench.  I wanted a simple piece of track that I could test locos and rolling stock before taking it to the layout.    I decided it would be a good idea to add 18” and 21” curves in the corner to mimic the curves on the layout.  Then I decided to add a few turnouts.  Uhm, can you say snowball?  In the end I added a version of John Allen’s Timesaver switching game at the left end and a UK switching game called Inglenook at the other.  I’m using the new test track to develop track laying techniques instead of experimenting on the layout.