Price Check: Hand Laying Track

About a year ago I wrote a blog post, Price Check: Turnouts, where I compared the various approaches to On30 turnouts.  I had meant to do a follow-up post to that, comparing hand laid track (non-turnouts) to flex track.  It seems as though I'm finally getting around to doing that.

The common census on the matter seems to be that hand laying track is about the same cost as flex track.  Let's put that to the test.

Before jumping into costs, let's review real quick the pieces that go into hand laying track.

Overview

Traditionally, rail is laid on top of ties and held in place by spikes.  The ties are glued to the roadbed which is fastened by either nail or adhesive to the sub-roadbed.  Each part in this system plays an important role.  The sub-roadbed, commonly plywood, spline masonite, or "pink" foam, provides a sturdy and stable surface to lay the track on.  The roadbed provides a smooth surface to lay the track on, giving something for the spikes to sink into, and performing noise dampening to the rails above so that they don't create an echoing effect on the hard sub-roadbed.  Common materials for roadbed including homosote and cork, with a few companies now offering roadbed in soft foam and gasket-like materials.

The issue of roadbed is something modelers always seem to have a strong preference on here or there.  It should be noted that because almost every narrow gauge line in the USA didn't do a proper right-of-way with formal ballast and such many modelers try to avoid using otherwise popular forms of roadbed.  Some who use pink foam and flex track skip the roadbed all together.  Others use 1/8" materials like basswood or matte board.

As far as tie and spiking usage go, the rule of thumb seems to be one tie every tie-and-a-half width and one spike every 4th tie, though this no doubt varies a lot among modelers, particularly those interested in narrow gauge.

Required Ingredients

For hand laying track (non-turnouts), there are then the these 4 ingredients:

• rail
• spikes
• ties
• roadbed

Both Kappler Mill & Lumber Co. and Mt. Albert Scale Lumber offer O scale narrow gauge ties in a scale 5"x7"x6' and 5"x7"x6'6".  The width of the tie in real world dimensions is 0.146" thick.  This means that in a foot of hand laid track, approximately 33 ties are needed (rounding up).  If the track is spiked ever 4th tie, 36 spikes would be needed for a foot of track to hold it down.  It's 36 because there would be 9 places to spike, with 2 spikes per rail and 2 rails in total leading to 36 spikes.

Prices

Roadbed

Now that we know what is needed, let's figure out how much it costs.  Starting on the bottom most layer, Midwest Products is probably the best known brand of cork roadbed for model railroaders.  Their box of 25' of cork has an MSRP of $40 but can be found in hobby stores for closer to $30, putting the price of cork roadbed at around $0.84/ft.

But not everyone likes cork, myself included.  It's crumbly, coarse, and can be difficult to cleanly cut.  A long-favorite of model railroaders is homasote.  Homasote is more or less an industrial product and bought it bulk a lot of work would need to be put into it to get it into a usable form.  Homabed, the "California Roadbed" company, takes the work out of homasote by offering pre-milled shapes for most scales.  One tricky thing about homasote is that it's not flexible, so to get it to bend kerfs are cut into it.  When buying homasote it can be bought in straight or flexible form, meaning in the long run more will have to be kept "in-stock" for the model railroader since two types are needed.  For the narrow gauge modeler it's probably safe to buy just the flexible type as narrow gauge lines weren't exactly know for straight track anyways.  In any case, a 48' box of homabed for On30 costs $48.80, or $1.02/ft.  It should be noted that homabed also offers a 60º profile roadbed for a more "prototypical look" for a few dollars more.

Lastly, Woodland Scenics offers their soft foam roadbed at round $30 for a box of 72', making this option the cheapest at $0.42/ft.  Mind you, this roadbed can't be used for hand laying track as it won't hold the spikes.

Spikes

For a while, the only manufacturer of readily available spikes was Micro Engineering.  They offer spikes in a number of sizes, but for On30 the "micro" at 3/16" tall or the "small" at 1/4" tall are the ones of interest.  A bag of 1000 spikes for both sizes sells for $9.40.  This works out to less than a penny per spike and around $0.34/ft.

Recently the Proto:87 store began offering spikes as well.  They come in a total of 4 sizes, HO scale short and long, and O/S scale short and long.  You can buy a sample pack for $10 which comes with 4 different sizes in it (of which I have and will write a blog post on hopefully sometime in 2013).  These spikes are much smaller than the Micro Engineering ones, but they come on a fret and must be cut off for use.  Also, I should not that these spikes are sharper and are designed to not require the spike hold to be pre-drilled first.  The O/S scale spikes are $12.95 for 1000, again working out to just over a penny each or $0.44/ft.

Rail

It seems the undisputed king of model railroading rail is Micro Engineering.  A bulk pack of 99 ft. of code 70 non-weathered rail costs $59.95.  Most hobby stores buy the bulk pack then sell the rail per piece in case you didn't need 99 feet.  Since each foot of hand laid track needs two rails, this puts the cost per foot of rail for hand laying at $1.22.

Ties

Both Kappler and Mt. Albert offer pre-cut ties, costing $22.95 and $25.85 for a bag of 850 ties respectively, with Kappler being the slightly cheaper of the two.  With a required 33 ties per foot, this puts the cost of ties at $0.90/ft.

Just in case you thought you'd just buy some strip wood in bulk and cut it yourself; don't.  Well, I shouldn't say "don't", but I do feel inclined to warn you I've tried this and it's very difficult to keep the ties the same width for many feet over.  Besides, the sugar pine that the pre-cut ties come in is a nice material to work with and probably preferable to basswood for holding spikes.

More interesting to talk about is tie finishing.  There are many ways of doing this which roughly fall into two categories: staining or painting.  The bulk of modelers doing hand laying (from what I can tell) prefer staining.  And again, there are two approaches to stain: make your own or buy pre-made.

Homemade stain is basically Rit shoe dye mixed very thin with distilled water and rubbing alcohol.  I've done this before and it works, but it takes some time to get the dye ratio right.  My conclusion of the matter was that I'd rather be a railroader, not a chemist, and paying a few more dollars for a pre-mixed solution was easier in my opinion.  Others have had great success with this method so it's really up to the individual modeler.

My favorite for the past few years has been Builders in Scale's Silverwood stain.  Actually, they sell more than just Silverwood.  I also have Black Wood, Redwood, and Deadwood stains from them as well.  At $8 for a 4 oz. and $13 for an 8 oz. bottle it's not "cheap" but the 8 oz. bottle lasts me for a few years so it seems worthwhile.

I recently found two more options for stain which I'm considering trying sometime next year.  The first is Hunterline, a Canadian company, which offers an extensive line (17 colors in all) of strip wood stain, at $7 for an 8 oz. bottle.

Dr. Ben's also offers some interesting looking products that I might play around with sooner or later as well, such as their Aged Driftwood stain.

Cost

So what's the grand total now?  Well it's hard to factor in the cost of things like stain and such, but the key components can be tallied.

• Roadbed: $0.84/ ft. (cork) or $1.02/ ft. (homasote)
• Spikes: $0.34/ ft. (ME) or $0.44/ ft. (P:87)
• Rail: $1.22/ ft.
• Ties: $0.90/ ft.
• Total: $3.30/ ft. to $3.58/ ft.

Flex Track

Here is the comparison.  Micro Engineering Flex Track can be had for $41.50 for a pack of 6 pieces of 3 ft. lengths, putting the price of flex track at $2.31/ ft. for the track only.  Roadbed and finishing materials would also need to be included..

• Flex Track: $2.31
• Roadbed: none or $0.42 (foam) $0.84/ ft. (cork) or $1.02/ ft. (homasote)
• Total: $2.73/ ft. to $3.33

Conclusion

The difference is almost negligible.  On a layout with 50 feet of track, the difference comes out to $13.

To close things out, I want to emphasize there are lots of non-monetary reasons to hand lay:

• The appearance of the track can be controlled at a much higher resolution
• Many consider the process more enjoyable
• The ties can be laid, sanded, and ballasted before the rail is spiked down
• There aren't any plastic ties to accidentally melt while soldering feeders
• Odd configurations, dual gauging  or custom angle crossings can be done without needing some manufacturer to produce that specific piece

Whatever method you choose, the important thing is putting the track down!