Model Railroading > Experimenting with Handlaid track...

And here is what it looks like, followed by how I did it

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I didn\'t actually buy anything for this project, just used what I had. For ties, I just gathered up what I had in cars and on my railroad, giving me a good variety of weathering with out actually having to do any. For rail, I used N scale (don\'t have any HO rail except code 100) Code 80(I think) and Code 55 (I think) the 55 looks like 80 pound rail in HO, which is what I was looking for.
This picture is of shims, which I used under 35 feet of each 40 foot section of rail. There are no shims under each joint therefore, which creates a very realistic dip.

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After that I placed the ties down, spacing them relatively far apart quasi-randomly. some ties were broken, which is great, because alot of ties are anyway. I put most of these at the joints because the pounding on the joints causes the most pressure

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After the ties were down and dry, I ballasted. I started with alot of light gray, then added buff. Brushing the eccess of left some holes, so I mainly put dirt, soil, brown ballast, and grass down. Along the sides I added alot more dirt and turf, and eventually static grass. After all of this i again brushed off the ties.

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To really get the worn out under maintened track look I had to put weeds in. I used mostly a medium green, with some dead grass thrown in. I cut it very short, especially if its going on the tracks. I let it look more overgrown on the sides. When I put the shims down, some had gaps between the two parallel pieces of cardboard. This made a good places to stick alot of weeds, as evidenced in the picture. Surprisingly, the weeds dont hamper operations at all and arent a problem even with engines

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Before I laid any rail I painted it a rusty color. I had run out of normal rail colors from last time I had painted track, so this time I managed to concoct a pretty good rust color from scarlet gray and reefer orange. once it was dry, I cleaned the tops of the rail and filed the bottom of each end. That really paid off electricty-wise because I have had no current problems at all. I spiked the track with noral spikes wherever it was needed, and ajusted the second rail to the first for the right guage. With no track gauge, I used a wheelset and good guessing.

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Here is what the end result looks like, to the best of my file size reducing abilities (which are severly lacking)
The track looks screwy but with a little more fine tuning it will be fine. I ran a P2K SD60 over it without derailment (!!) so you would think it can take anything... but next time I\'m not doing a curve

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Looks good to me. Thanks for the step by step results. Cant wait to see the curve. Ken

Nice work! If you are not a Rock Island modeler already then you certainly have the tracklaying skills to be one now! ;-)

Loco Bil

Penn central track laying 101. That would be good for a branch or little used shortline. Looks fantastic. Now I have to go find someplace to do that.
HB90MACH

That\'s great work, I\'m planning on modeling a shortline that\'s low on capital and will have track that\'s really bad, your techniques will help me when I start building.

Nice work on that. Looks good.

Well done on the trackwork, but it\'s nothing a Shay wouldn\'t like to tackle!
Narrowgauge

Or a Milwaukee Road modeler, some of their track looked about the same. Great work, looks very realistic. I think this is one of those posts to print off and save for future reference :)

Thanks for sharing!

-Mike


LocoBil wrote:

> Nice work! If you are not a Rock Island modeler already then
> you certainly have the tracklaying skills to be one now! ;-)
>
> Loco Bil
>
> [%sig%]

Thanks for the responses, now its time to get started on my dream- Milwaukee in the prairies, since I seem to have the first step down... now all I need is everything but that