Laying track again on the
Kansas City Terminal Railway
Modeling real railroads and what they do
A
fter a long hiatus from track laying (January 2013), I
am back at it. Just to get everyone back up to speed, I
spent a lot of time finishing up the Union Station scene,
I added sound (June 2013), night time animation (August
2013), and a 1950s auto carrier (February 2014) to complete
the scene. Now it’s time to get serious about laying track and
getting the expansion operational.
For the mainline addition to the layout, I used Micro
Engineering Code 83 nickel silver flex track. The detail is very
good, with a tie plate under every tie and four to eight scale-
size spikes per tie. Visitors have often asked me if I considered
hand-laying the track. I ask them if they know a way to hand-
lay track with fish plates and scale-size spikes on every tie! I
have hand-laid track in the past. Even the smallest spikes avail-
able are way oversize, and ruin the appearance in photos. At
that, I was laying four spikes every fifth tie. I can’t beat the
Micro Engineering product for speed of construction and realis-
tic appearance.
Getting Real column
by
Nick Muff, MD
Now it’s time to get serious about actually
laying track ...
Getting Real Column - 1
MRH-May 2014
