Posted on by Kumar Desai

Back to Tracklaying

Ok so the ties are down at last ready for laying rail. By now the process of laying ties is straightforward:

  1. Weather the ties by adding wood grain, gouges, and cuts to reflect the usual wear and tear of a poorly maintained branch line. Further weathering will be done while ballasting.
  2. Then stain with a light Indian ink and alcohol mix. I will do a proper coloring of the ties later with my Winsor Newton markers.
  3. Lay the non-turnout lengths with 1 PCB (printed circuit board) tie followed by 5 wooden ties. The PCB ties are stuck down with two part epoxy and the wooden ties are stuck down with PVA (white) glue.
  4. On the turnouts I lay two PCB ties followed by two wooden ties as I need to make sure I have PCB ties available in several key areas.
  5. I used 19′” spaces between the tie centers but varied it to once again reflect movement of ties over time and poor maintenance.

Here the result so far:

The track was laid on top of my Templot drawing. Templot allowed me to create non-standard turnout designs on which to lay the track. I wanted gentle swaying curves that reflected true prototype track.
My calibration weights held my work in place while I worked on laying new ties elsewhere.
Here you can see the difference between PCB ties and wooden ties.
I’ve done two areas, currently working on the third and have two more to do after that.

I’ll start laying rail Monday. I’m going to work on the diorama tomorrow.

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