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Bill, I always enjoy pictures of your trackwork. You can get such nice flowing tracks by hand laying it.?

Before I built my last layout, I looked at buying the jigs, but I would have needed so many variations, and some for only one turnout, so I didn't buy any. It was a good decision. One of the first turnouts I built for that layout was a 48"/44" curved dual gauge turnout. Originally I was planning on making the inner radius 45", but that made the turnout too large. It was large enough, and the K frog was huge, There was also a curved Sn2 track that ran across the two sets of rails just after the last frog. That layout had lots of curved turnouts, some asymmetrical wye turnouts and all kinds of dual gauge variations. And then there were the three dual gauge three-way stub turnouts. My favorite was the one where all three routes curved the same way. It got to the point where laying a standard turnout was kind of boring.

The track work on my current layout is not quite as adventurous, but I'm not finished yet.?

Dave Heine

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Learning how to hand lay turnouts allows for a lot of peculiar turnout shapes, various curved turnouts, asymmetrical?wyes, and so on.? ?Buying jigs for every possibility is grossly too expensive.? ?Building in place is fun.? If you mess with more?than one gauge, there are more than a dozen versions relating to dual gauge -- I know, because I think I have built at least one of every type.? Some photos are attached.? ?One is of a curved std gauge turnout of 75" and 78" radius that is two feet between the points and the frog, a #16.? You can't buy that!? There is also a photo of one of Dick Karnes' "puzzle tracks" where the turnouts also include a crossing through them.? Amazing!?

Have fun!

Bill Winans