This video shows how to lay stock rails, frog rails, closure rails and the frog for the Switch-Works "Ultimate" turnout. Switch-Works is a set of jigs for assembling "Museum Standard" track featuring wooden ties, metal tie plates, etched frogs and machined points.

I am working on getting an older Walthers/Shinohara double crossover ready to work with DCC.  I had set it aside a long time ago because it looked like a nightmare to make it DCC friendly.  I'm following Steve Baggot's instructions on Alan Gartner's Wiring for DCC website.  

I was given a bunch of steel rail "O Scale" I think. Maybe 20-30 pounds of it along with a bunch of pre stained ties that were in old Walthers boxes. I am thinking of taking it to the metal salvage  but maybe people still have a use for it?

I'm ready (finally!) to start building my much-delayed layout. I'm trying to decide how I want to operate my turnouts. There seem to be two general schools of thought, I.e. hands-on vs. remote operation. I see valid points on both sides, but tend to favor the remote camp after seeing one guy break a ground throw on a layout he was a guest operator on and personally being responsible for knocking over a couple of pieces of rolling stock on an adjacent track when I was throwing a switch on the same layout.