When viewed from more that about 2 feet away, it’s difficult to really notice the hand spiked track.
Easier when you’re closer.
I never did get much thrill out of hand-spiking my track, but a lot of folks seem to love it. More power to them; it’s just not for me.
Steve Featherkile said:
Kevin, do you bend the spikes over a bit so they don’t back out, or does the fact that they just stick out the bottom of the tie do the trick?
When I built my first outdoor layout, I used ME steel spikes which rusted. After a few years, if I wanted to remove the rail, the head of the spike broke off before the shaft. (Which is another way of saying don’t use stainless spikes - they don’t rust.)
I gave up hand-laid plain track. Too much like hard work, though I had a set of tools based on experience. The best one was a cordless Dremel drill with a tiny bit to pre-drill a pilot hole for the spikes. I used to drill through the ME tie plates into redwood ties.
I made my own gauges by cutting off bits of a yard stick and making a slot at each side of the 1.75" markers.
The other tool was a pair of ‘spiking pliers’ sold by Micromark. They were just small pliers with rubber handle covers and were sized for our small spikes. Easy to press the spike in the hole. Then tap it home with a 1/8" rod and a small hammer. Alas, the rubber handle covers wore out quickly and my palms got sore from the effort of pushing the spikes into the ties.
I hand spiked track for a very few reasons. One was so I could say that, yea, I have done that. And another reason was, at the time, I couldn’t find any commercially produced HO/HOn30 dual gauge track. As for my large scale switch, it was part of an online group effort, and I needed a switch that wasn’t quite the size of what I could buy.
Now that I have done hand laying of track, I might do it again. But I know its very time intensive.
In HO, they say that spiking every 5th or 6th tie is good enough, but to me that is visually jarring, so I tried to spike every tie. I found that I missed a few on my trestle, but I have to look hard to see what ones are missing after I applied the weathering.
I laid these bridge track pieces out for the pictures. Only the main rails are nailed down. I still need to finish them.(http://www.largescalecentral.com/public/album_photo/0d/ca/01/1c744_7eba.jpg?c=f23c)
(http://www.largescalecentral.com/public/album_photo/db/c9/01/1c713_14db.jpg?c=b616)
(http://www.largescalecentral.com/public/album_photo/dd/c9/01/1c715_4d06.jpg?c=7780)
