I've been given a few tips, which are reflected in the bullet points below:
- Prepare fishplates before fitting them. I have a small piece of track in a pin vice, which is used to open out the ends.
- Beware of turning up the end of the fishplate when adding it onto a piece of track, and check it assembles before using glue.
- When adding points, add the insulating fishplates to the point frog straight away: this makes it less likely they will be forgotten. Remember that crossovers will need all 8 joins to have insulating fishplates.
- Don't forget to put the "cosmetic" extra two sleepers under the fishplates BEFORE joining the new track.
- Points have a hole drilled for the point motor actuating rod BEFORE gluing down. Mark through the hole and drill through with a 6.5mm drill. It can conveniently be marked using either a very fine tip pen, or by stamping into the cork with a discarded piece of actuating rod. I try to "waggle" the drill from side to side under the baseboard to make the hole wider at the bottom.
- After laying the bed of glue, put a small piece a raised wood (a "bridge") over the far end of the track section so the glue isn't touched until the first end has been joined onto its fishplates.
- Where possible, I'm using the "Tracksetta" templates. However most radii aren't the "standard" ones, so I can only use them in some places. However they do provide a good guide as to whether curvature is approximately constant.