Anyone have experience mating the Bachmann EZ track with the Fleischmann track?

[jward]

Hand building switches?  You must be a young man.  I don't have enough time left on earth to do something like that, even though the results are much better looking than commercial, than to just buy something and put it in.

Haha, 'm not that much younger than you, and probably older than most on this forum.

When handbuilding track, jigs help alot. Especially with switches. With a jig, I can take a 3 foot length of rail and turn it into a working switch ready to spike to the ties in about an hour. And it will be built to closer tolerances than anything you can buy. The jigs ar not cheap, but as with anything else if you're going to do the job you should have proper tools. I figure after I've built 5 or 6 switches the jig has paid for itself, and anything else I build I'm saving a ton of money.

Right now, the only commercially made track on my railroad is the turntable and associated radial tracks. The radials extend under an upper level industrial area, and were one of the last things I added. It was easier to use sectional track there instead of removing the upper level to get access to the area.

[trainman203]

Do you make your own frogs and point rails?  How can a jig do that?

I love the way that hand laid track looks.

[jward]

There is a point form tool which is a metal block you clamp the rail into. You file the rail flush with the block and you've got perfectly formed points. It works for frog points as well. There is a similar tool used to notch the stock rails so the points fit perfectly. Everything else is a matter of bending the rail to fit the jig.

[trainman203]

I remember filing nickel silverrail taking forever.

[bbmiroku]

Handheld belt sander.

[trainman203]

Still have to solder stuff, right? I despise soldering.

[jward]

I thought this was a craftsman's hobby? Soldering is one of the crafts every modeller should learn. It comes in handy in so many applications from trackwork to locomotive repair to building construction. Metal is great to work with, especially when what you are trying to model is also metal.

[trainman203]

 Have you ever super detailed a brass steam locomotive by soldering on a minute detail like a Whistle?  That's a lost art today but a common one in 1963.  They used to be a certain crowd that said you weren't a real Model Railroader unless you did stuff like that. I mean, I drop of solder about the size of a pinpoint and no more.  Some could do it, I couldn't, but I don't think I was less of a modeler because of that. There's other ways to attach details.

I never could do stuff like that and I got really tired of the broken record about soldering.

[Len]

Soldiering is a skill that has to be learned, like airbrushing without leaving splotches or runs. One of the problems people run into is they don't have the right equipment. They use an iron that either too small, or too large. Or they use the wrong solder or flux. Etc., etc. Like airbrushing, it takes practice. It doesn't hurt to take a precision soldering class if a local community college offers one.

Len

[jward]

Another problem these days is that people expect everything to be plug n play and are lost when it isn't. Anything worth doing is a learning experience.

[Ralph S]

Have you ever super detailed a brass steam locomotive by soldering on a minute detail like a Whistle?

One thing I learned is to solder the hand railings of the locomotive instead of gluing the railings.  When I get the right soldering iron/pencil, I'm going to perform that task on all my locomotives.  Currently they all are just hanging by the wire that's attached to the shell.  The verticals leaning to and fro.   I tried glue and that just ruined the looks of some of the stanchions. 
Plug and play sounds like me, when it comes to laying/placing track...