At last on the final stretch of the tracklaying. I’ve laid the ties and will get to the track itself tomorrow. Just a few notes:
- I realized that weathering the ties once they are glued down is much easier than doing it beforehand. The firm base makes using the various weathering tools much less exhausting. This also means that I can just go ahead and use pre-cut un-weathered ties rather than cutting my own. I’ll get to the weathering tomorrow.
- I stopped using my tie spacer. In the end just eyeballing the ties gave me a nice effect and sped up the whole process. As a result the ties have a realistic variety of spacings between them that adds character to the track and reflects the poor maintenance and wear of the roadbed.
- I may pull up some of the non-crossing ties later as I may have to change the surrounding ground and roadbed to reflect its use (the car bar and coal spur).
- I’m just laying the track around the turnout and crossing. I’ll lay the rest of the rail once the ballast and earth is in place between ties.
