Re: Update from Chama--16:30 July 25

You missed some UK developments in amateur tracklaying of which you may not be aware. Most of the Welsh Highland Railway's 25 miles of track has been laid by volunteer gangs with no previous experience of railway work (but guided by real experts). The rail is mostly 60 or 70 lb per yard, quite light by US standards, but very heavy for two foot gauge (but our locos weigh 60 tons)
The essential tools are two, rail skates and rollers. Rail skates are small wheeled things with a pair of lazy tongs which can pick up one end of each of two rails, form a vehicle with another skate the other end, and then one or two men can move them up to the head of steel (we actually used a 20 hp diesel loco but these may not be available to you). The rollers are single rollers cut from a warehouse conveyor and fitted with a channel on the underneath, cut from steel stock, so they sit comfortably on your sleepers. You're ahead of me now. At the head of steelYou drop one end of one of your rails onto a roller and then just roll it forward to its place. then repeat with the other rail, bolt down (we used steel sleepers). Join the fishplates, job done.
In this way an eight man crew can lay eight to ten complete panels of 60 foot track a day, say 500 foot of track daily, all by hand.
Full details are somewhere on the vast website isengard.co.uk which has documented the rebuild day by day for the last ten or so years.