I'm still waiting on my track gauges from Micro Engineering. I'll post some photos when I get more track laid.
I agree w/ Steve's post above, re: time. I have a ton of respect for the guys that hand lay track or even just a few turnouts. Given that I am a "lone wolf" modeler, I am doing everything on my layout. I would love to take the time to practice/learn and implement some hand built trackwork. Its just not in the stars for me at this time. There's some beautiful trackwork out there and some talented folks putting it down. Also I have to admit, even if I had the extra time, I think for my enjoyment I would rather invest that time in building some better structures for my layout as well as spending more time on some craftsman level freight car kits. Good thread. I'll be interested to see how many folks respond and actually hand lay their own track.
This thread has generated a lot of responses already:tb-biggrin:. I had no idea that so many people still handlay. The pictures are beutiful guys!!! Keep them coming!:thumbs_up:
The last hand lay I did was on the turntable for the roundhouse. But because I have already been fitted for my coffin, the rest of my track will just have to be commercial, if I live long enough, and can quit shaking so much. There is so much glue slung on the walls, I wont need scenery!
LOL!!!:tb-biggrin: With a sense of humor like yours I'm sure you have many years left to accumulate "scenery" on your walls!
Well Steve, when you finally drag your weary old bones along as many years as I have you begin to get loose at the joints. It does sometimes speed things up though. In starting to paint some sort of back drop on the white walls of a new train room, and right after opening a can of sky blue paint, my shakes hit again which made me lose my balance. The fall didn't hurt too much, but as I spun around I grabbed the only thing within reach, the paint can! When the soreness was gone enough, we went back up stairs to see what damage I had done. Jan said, "You did a better job on those clouds than I expected, it looks pretty good. Next time maybe you should remove the pictures before painting though." Its what would be called a 3 second back drop! . . . (Now you know that was a figment of imagination, a "Texas Truth" so to speak, but it did cross my mind when I lost my balance the other day.) .
Handlay? Hi Steve, Quite a few O and S scalers still handlay track mainly due to the cost and limited availability of switches in those scales. For the modern methods of handlaying check out the P87 shops offerings on their website and the discussion on the yahoo layout design s.i.g. group. If one wants to spend the time it's possible to build some superior track by hand but it's also possible to build a pretty nice layout with atlas flextrack if desired. BTW As far as I know homasote was never a hobby shop item, I always found it at a lumber yard. There's also california roadbed company products( pre cut homasote roadbed in most scales)....dave
Thanks for the info Dave. It turns out that the hobby shop I asked had a whole box in the back and sold ALL of it to me for $10.00!!! I think the company in California is formerly Homa-Bed.
