I can't help you with a track plan Carey. I never had one.
I've known some modelers who built their layouts this way, and it seemed that they would have 3-4 layouts, to one of mine, they made so many changes. I understand not having a drawn out plan but you do have one, its in your head. Now, I've
always had to have a drawn plan, but it was never used as a "blueprint" to the construction of a layout. To me they are always a guideline to what I want. For example, on my trackplan, that's on my website and even on this website, I have an interchange with the L&N, that was never installed. I felt that it would make the area it was in, look too congested with track. There are several areas that things have been inserted or removed that may or not be on the plan.
I did have a plan for the railroad and ideas for towns and industries. That's the nice thing about hand laying track or using flex track. You can have broader curves not being locked into set radius turns as you would be using sectional track. I just let the track flow and worked in the town and industries as the layout moved along. I only had one problem in the town of Anceny. I did want to stick to a 32 inch minimum radius cruve for the main line and laid the track a bit too soon and it ended up that the town just didn't look right and in dealing with a rather small space tracks had to be moved to make all of the rail customers fit into the town. Oops
This is the perfect example of why the plan to me is simply a guide and
NOT an absolute, that must, must be built exactly as drawn, with no changes at all. Doing it this way will actually frustrate you more times than actually getting pleasure from the build. I'm also aware of handlaid track biggest problem,
CHANGES! Because when you make a change to handlaid track, you
will lose a lot of ties, if not
all of them, you'll
definitely lose 99% of the spikes put down. To top it off, if you're not careful about extracting the rail, you
will lose that as well. Don't expect to make these changes in a few hours either. Changes are much easier with Flex.
Only my first 2 layouts were built with sectional track, cause by then I had taught myself how to handlay track and build my own turnouts. I've handlaid ever since. Now, don't get me wrong, I've used flex track on layouts that I've help build, from 3 club layouts, to 20, if not more friends personal layouts. From code 125 track for O-scale 2 rail, to code 55 for narrow gauge in HO. I learned how to tune up or even rebuild turnouts up to the point where I can get the worst performing turnouts, to perform as well as the best turnouts on the market.
I find handlaying my track and turnouts very relaxing, and not tedious at all. I had found out, after first learning to handlay, and build turnouts, of all kinds, that I had enough practice to be able to build turnouts better than I could buy, and a lot cheaper as well. The tools I used to handlay with; A pair of lightweight needle nose pliers, for many years a Dremel with a cutoff disk, now with Xuron cutters, 5 KD three point gauges, a thin metal straight edge,and last but definitely not least, a NMRA Gauge. A regular turnout, #4,#6,#8 or bigger costs me about $3.00, and the most expensive switch is a double crossover. It was about $9.00. What was the price of a double slip? $7.00
When I started this layout, I had some 8 bags of Campbell's low profile ties left with the price on them as marked $6.95 per bag of regular ties and $7.95 for the switch ties. I almost had a heart attack when I saw what their price was, This was about 10 years ago, and the ties were around $20.00 a bag. Don't know what the price is now. So I learned to cut my own ties. I cut the "blanks" on a 10" table saw, and then cut the ties to proper length on a 4" table saw. I have jigs that I use, for the proper sizes, and to date I believe that I have cut, stained and glued down over 35,000 ties. The board that I cut them from was an 8' long piece of knotless white pine. I still have almost 1/2 of that board left and I have about another 50-75 feet of track left to lay, depending on some changes that I see may have to be done. That's why the large difference in the possible length still to go.
