Custom crossing

[mjhilson]

I have decided to resume model railroading after letting my original layout lie dormant in boxes after moving decades ago.  Got some nice plans drawn up but then my 7 year old grandson decided that might be a nice idea for himself, so, stupid me said OK, I'll build you a little layout first.  This is turning into a major effort as I downsized a 4½ x 5½ foot layout to fit on a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood and incidentally fit in my van so I could deliver it.  The original plan had a 19 deg crossing but that doesn't work in the downsized version.  What I seem to need is a custom crossing built into to curved tracks.  So far so good-although I've never done anything like hand laying track-I created a template, cut some track to fit but now I'm up against creating custom plastic isolating crossovers.  How on earth do I do that?  Is plastic track available?  Layout is HO using code 83 track.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Mike

[jward]

if you are going to handlay a crossing, you'd want to make it out of rail, and cut insulating gaps into it after it has already been put in place. you won't be able to run trains over it until it is insulated. if you are running dcc, you can use an autoreverser to control the polarity of the legs.

[Len]

Like jward said, you use all metal rail to handlay crossings and cut gaps where needed to isolate things. Similar to hand laying turnouts. There are templates and tools for doing this available. These folks, http://www.handlaidtrack.com/, have free downloadable templates available.

There's a description of the basics of hand laying crossings here: http://original.trainlife.com/articles/103/construction-of-a-rail-crossing

Len

[mjhilson]

Thanks

Mike