Twisty

I’m forging ahead on my S scale layout segment depicting the Welland Avenue car barn and storage yard that formed the heart of the Niagara St. Catharines & Toronto Railway. As reported elsewhere on this website, I drew a plan for this scene in mid-July and I’ve quickly progressed to benchwork, cork roadbed, and ties.

Ready for rail.

There’s a joke about the four phases of a railway modeller’s life, as defined by the track they use. Those phases are:

• Phase 1: Sectional track
• Phase 2: Flex track
• Phase 3: Hand laid track
• Phase 4: Flex track

I guess I’ve reached Phase 4. On previous layouts, I’ve hand-laid my track on individual wood ties. This time around, I’m embracing flex track – sort of. That’s because I decided to try laser cut tie strips from Fast Tracks – part of the company’s Twist Ties line. These are strips and turnout blocks laser cut from thin plywood. They have laser etched alignment guides to help place the rails and a number of pre-drilled holes for spikes.

Call me a convert: I was able to lay all of the ties in an afternoon, and – more importantly – I did a better job than I have in the past. The rail guides etched into the tie stock allowed me to line up sections correctly and I’m confident the resulting track work will be neater.

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On my last layout, Port Rowan, messy track work was not an issue – in fact, it was a feature: My prototype was an end-of-life branch line facing abandonment, so the occasional odd jog in the rails looked perfectly intentional.

But the NS&T was never abandoned: It was still very much a going concern (at least, for freight traffic) when its parent company, the CNR, pulled the plug in 1960. That’s because “pulling the plug” mean turning off the electricity – not giving up on the business – as the CNR switched the NS&T from radial railway subsidiary to diesel-served spur lines. Parts of the one-time NS&T still serve customers today.

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With the ties down, I can move on to staining them and adding rail. I’ve unpacked my turnout-building tools and will start cutting, filing, and soldering. I plan to build conventional Fast Tracks turnouts, with PC board ties in key locations – then fit them to the tie strips. To that end, I’ve marked ties to be removed to make space for the PCB ties, once I’m ready to lay rail.

Meantime, I continue to make progress on various freight motor projects so I will have plenty of equipment to use as a test the trackage. I’ve ordered supplies to build the structures. And I’m doodling ideas to help me decide whether, and how, to incorporate this scene into a larger layout.

All in all, a surprising amount of progress in just a few short weeks!