first stab at handlaid track

[chuck geiger]

Nobody orders em' from Mr. Taggert in Rockridge anymore.

[tom mann]

You may want to look into the tieplates from proto87stores.com:

http://www.mannresearch.com/rr/track/track_11.jpg

[Caleb Austin]

I might tryout those tieplates but, man they look tiny

[ednadolski]

Yes, they are tiny & hard to work with.  Also I've found that if you don't paint them a contrasting color, they can blend in with the ties and nearly disappear.  Here is a sample I did, the tieplates look OK in the photo but I find them a lot harder to see in-person (but maybe that's just my aging eyes).   

http://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/MLUeR43MflvfPldoAQ11DddGs6fvOkSuV3qDzpFZuTscyrpQMIDgLAea-3IP3HgAjNvqPAp4HcjUEwjeiPft05qCPplhXV-k/Ed%27s%20Hand-spiked%20trackwork/100_0063-cropped2.jpg

BTW I used the ME ties, but those seem to have a lot of variance in their dimensions.  Tom, which ties did you use?  They look really good.

Ed

PS - if you guys arent on the N_finescale group on Yahoo, you really should consider joining 

[ednadolski]

Lee

yeah the lack of spike heads is annoying but I find it less noticable than oversized plastic spikes.

Scale spike heads would be pretty hard to see in 1/160 scale -- around 0.005" or so.  I think we all get kinda used to looking at the oversized ones on commercial flextrack.

Even the 1/87 scale photoetched spikes from http://www.proto87.com/ are kinda hard to see -- They're even hard to pick up w/o a tweezer (tho the elongated ones are easier to work with).

[RS-27]

In Horribly Oversized, Central Valley made (along with that beautiful styrene truss bridge) the best looking plastic tie strip, ever.

Judging by that I still have the 2 boxes from when I had my shop, I sure wouldn't put my money up to tool and produce it in N.  Then again, the owner of CV (Jack something? (the one who had those gorgeous B&W NP scenes in MR in the 80s)) probably used most of the production run on his layout, and wrote it off on his taxes.

I think it would be kewl to have a photo module with split/ bent ties with loose spikes, low joints, weeds between the ties, etc., but can't see trying to achieve that detail level on the 100+ super broad squares (John Armstrong's planning guide) in my basement room.  Hell, I can't afford all the Atlas code 55 I'll need.  CNJ had up to six tracks in NJ.

Bob in IDaho

[tom mann]

BTW I used the ME ties, but those seem to have a lot of variance in their dimensions.  Tom, which ties did you use?  They look really good.

Thanks - I can't remember, but I got them from Proto87stores.com.