Great story and loved the pix. I too thought that hand laid ties and hand spiked rail would look cool, so I added a 20 foot long siding.
1st lesson learned was that splines under the ties are absolutely necessary. Second is that even micro-engineering spikes will pull out over time. Unless there are splines under the rails trying to reset the spikes only shoves the ties into the ballast.
I used old redwood fence boards cut to scale lengthwise and widthwise, but left them the thickness of the board ā about 5/8 inch to get better tooth in the ballast. The track has not shifted for me in the five or six years since I put the siding in.
I laid the completed track sections in a shallow trench, but didnāt do much drainage work. The splines have begun to rot out, but the ground here is a very heavy clay and stays moist most of the time down about three or four inches.
