Just an update, now that I am back working at it. So far I have built three curved turnouts and a curved diamond crossing. Building these by hand allowed me to fit the track and turnouts into the layout with a smooth flow that was simply unobtainable with commercial units. The Fastrack tools have been helpful for putting things together -- frog soldering, shaping tools and so forth. I did not use their assembly fixtures. Instead, I used portions of their templates  glued to the roadbed and reshaped as needed. The NMRA gauge has been a savior -- the three point track gauges have not been so helpful.

Process so far, after working out the exact shape, has been to glue the wood ties down, sand them in place until level and equivalent in thickness to the PC ties. Cut the sanded, glued down ties to length with the razor saw. Then glue down the PC ties and proceed to install the rails. I was quite surprised at how quick the process went and how good the results looked. (I will post pictures after  I get the rail gaps cut.)

The diamond crossing was much more complicated -- essentially a straight track cutting across a 24" radius mainline curve. All the little guard rails and multiple frogs... Unsolder wick was essential -- must have redone it at least three times. Some of the PC rails started to look pretty sad by the time it was done. In the end, it was easier to build the crossing and then cut the flangeways through the rails with a rotary tool. Pushing a car through the crossing seems to go ok. Will be interesting when I can power it up and run my touchy 0-6-0 loco across it...

In the end, having put down a couple of dozen commercial turnouts of various flavors, I really liked the elegance of the hand-laid turnouts. And given some of the Procrustean Bed issues working with commercial units in a limited space have imposed, I am somewhat sorry I did not have the courage to go this way sooner. But when I muse about going back and redoing the other stuff, she who must be obeyed just gives me the look. Sigh... maybe some day.

Anyhow, here is one of the new turnouts with the curved crossing in the background. I have just drilled the throwbar for the turnout motor. Happily, the number of old and new turnouts is the same although in different locations. So with luck I can just re-use the  cable connectors from the prior setup. No apparent shorts -- checked with the ohm meter and everything 'looks' ok. Ran a heavyweight coach thru and found that one of the point rails sagged under load and allowed the wheel to ride over it -- surprised me. A bit of shimming should do it,  I hope. Still, I have built four of these without really knowing what I was doing -- other than reading a bunch of articles. Am not unhappy with the results although my soldering is probably fairly crude.