VTRailway
Active Member
Looking for advice. Looking at building a multi level N scale layout. The lower level with staging yard and interchange yard plus a hand full of industries has the better part of 60 turnouts. I used anyrail software. In this I selected Peco med and large radius turnouts. I'm torn between hand laying the track and buying store bought turnouts. I like the idea of saying I built everything including the track but I also get hand laying track is tedious and time consuming. I found handlaidtrack dot com. They seem to have tons of tools and gadgets to make the turnouts and other items of a railroad easier (notice I didn't say simple) and with repeatable results. For the tools to build #6 and #8 code 55 turnouts is $475 not including the PCB ties, wooden ties or rails.
Curious if there are hidden benefits to building your own versus store bought. They state the hand laid rails are more reliable. I will admit that non hinged rails are appealing to me. While I'm not in a huge hurry to complete this project, I also would like to be able to run trains before I die.... Also curious if anyone hand lays straight and curved track or just uses off the shelf flex track. I've used atlas code 80 in the past. Short of the slip rail being a bit flimsy in the ties, I've had no issues with it. I do plan to have a 36" double track helix in this multi level layout too.
Curious if there are hidden benefits to building your own versus store bought. They state the hand laid rails are more reliable. I will admit that non hinged rails are appealing to me. While I'm not in a huge hurry to complete this project, I also would like to be able to run trains before I die.... Also curious if anyone hand lays straight and curved track or just uses off the shelf flex track. I've used atlas code 80 in the past. Short of the slip rail being a bit flimsy in the ties, I've had no issues with it. I do plan to have a 36" double track helix in this multi level layout too.