@CandOfan

I agree

.

I buy some times ago the paper version of Run like a charm.

I often use the term in my post.

Some tips in the book are very clever and open eyes on these little things which can make a layout a real nightmare if not correçted.

I'm considering me with real humility  an accomplished modeler in N scale and I have lay hundreds scale miles of N track using now FT turnouts.

And thank  you again Joef for some of the tips shared in the book, from which I  have retired valuable experience

In fact like a old french song sing by the late Jean Gabin, he say  "And now I know I know nothing", this reflect the fact we need to learn every day, year after year and there is every time something to learn, like in this book

And to conclude and this is my own opinion, track is probably  the thing which need the biggest attention, the thing which must admit no mistakes when you build a layout because bad layed track is going to give  you nightmare and has really the capacity to conduct you to let down the hobby.

Track is forever

You're right on the money ... I make the point in the Run like a Dream book series that track is forever. You lay it then you live with it for the life of the layout unless you do a rip-and-replace which is a major redo.

If a piece of rolling stock or a loco misbehaves, you can just take it off the layout (immediate solution) if all else fails. You can't do that with track.

I thought I had learned a lot

I thought I had learned a lot about this subject when I did multiple experiments on my old central midland layout. But I still found myself making mistakes on my new layout. It is very surprising how such little cliches can cause problems. And I am working in HO, I can't image those problems with N scale,...wow.

I think I have a video of Joe's, titled something like this 'run like a dream'. I'll have to try and find it.

It’s simple Brian

Brian, don’t make it so hard. Just get the eBook. The PDF is less than $12 for 100+ pages all on trackwork.

https://store.mrhmag.com/store/p131/ebook/run-like-a-dream-trackwork.html

You won’t find any other ebook PDF that’s this comprehensive on model railroad trackwork for this price.

That $12 investment will save

That $12 investment will save you HOURS if it only prevents you from making ONE track mistake. And those will be very frustrating hours, too. This week I spent four hours - this is not an exaggeration - doing a mediocre quality job of fixing one egregious error that was covered in the book. My mission was to eliminate a kink entering a turnout. It was kinked because the turnout was installed slightly at an angle to avoid opposing equipment on an independent line from literally hitting the ground throw on the turnout. And this turnout is under quite permanent scenery and very hard to reach. I ripped out the turnout and replaced it, installed a Tortoise (who wants to crawl under there to flip a ground throw???) and re-aligned all three tracks. That would have taken 20 minutes if it had been accessible. Somebody should have read Joe's book when they were installing this stuff...

Can confirm

These reference documents are gold to any new join, or returnee to the hobby that may have been out for a while and missed some developments.

The only danger from using these materials, as CandOfan points out, is that you already made the mistakes and now think you should re-do portions - or all - of your previous work.