With the roadbed in place it was time to start cutting ties. I had already got myself a stockpile of 4mm x 4mm basswood strips. When I built the turnout I used pine strips, since at that time I could not locate any basswood here in Sweden. The pine was a hassle since it was to hard for driving spikes into, and every spike needed pre-drilling. I did not want to do that again, and luckily I eventually managed to locate a guy that ripped and sold his own basswood strips. I think they will work much better.
Anyway, I needed a little more than 500 ties so I brought out my NWSL Chopper and started to cut away.
and after about an hour it was all done
The next step would of course be to glue down the ties on the roadbed. When building the turnout I downloaded a turnout template from Fast Tracks, printed it and used as a template when laying the ties and the track. Now I did however not want to glue paper on top of the bitumen since I was afraid that the glue and the paper would in some way form a seal and turn the bitumen into a sound box. The opposite of why I used the bitumen in the first place.
I still printed a section of a Fast Tracks turnout template but cut it in half length-wise. I then pinned one half on each side of the bitumen roadbed, like this:
I could then easily locate each tie, using the paper templates as an aiming tool. I spread white glue on the roadbed with a brush, and then simply put each tie down in the glue, one by one.
When I reached the end of the templates, I just repositioned them further down and continued from there. A little extra care was needed when the roadbed curved, since the ties had to be spaced further apart on the outer side of the curve.
Soon enough all ties had been laid for the first stretch of track.
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