The accuracy of a track layout designed by RR-Track was recently brought up in another thread in this forum. In my experience, RR-Track specified the stock track, cut-track, and turnouts required with as nearly perfect accuracy as I could have expected for laying out the track.
My layout has over 900 feet of Atlas track, 46 Atlas turnouts, and 12 Ross turnouts. The track includes 108 cut stock straight track sections, 33 cut stock curved track sections and several (fewer than 10) cut flex track sections.
In addition to cutting the track to within 1/16-inch of the RR-Track specified lengths for the cut track sections, there were two things I did that I feel were critical to achieve the nearly perfect correlation between the RR-Track plan and the actual track layout I attained.
First, was laying out the curves to the exact radius of the curve sections on the layout surface (QuietBrace in my case). To do this, I made a large ‘compass’ out of a 48-inch aluminum ruler I had on hand, and to which I added an extension to reach the 54-in radius for Ø108-inch curve sections. Later on I bought a 6-foot ruler, but found that the extra length over the actually needed just go in the way. So instead of cutting off the new ruler, I continued using the modified ruler. I used a white pencil to draw the track center lines on the QuietBrace.
Anchoring of the ‘compass’ center became a challenge in many cases, but I was able to improvise and provide the support for the compass center for every case. Occasionally, the center of the curves fell on the layout, but more often than not, the center fell in empty space or over track that I already had installed. Some of the pictures below show my compass and the improvised centers I provided when said centers did not fall on a readily available surface.
Second, were the three track spacing gauges I made out of 3/4-inch plywood. These allowed me to maintain the exact 4-1/2 inches between the dual main, which extend through the entire layout, as well as the any places where I have three or more parallel tracks. The gauges can be used on straight as well as on curved sections.
Click on images or thumbnails (at the bottom) for greater detail.
Hope this helps.
Alex
