I had to replace a 6' section of curved track today. When I hand-laid it, I knew I would have to replace it someday and it turned out to be sooner, rather than later. In general, I'm not real happy with my hand-spiked track using short, vintage rails. It's proving to be unstable as to gauge and I think it will only get worse as the weather changes. True, I could spike down the rails at every tie, but that is quite tedious. All-in-all, I gotta say that the appearance of the hand-spiked track is not appreciably better than sectional track, once the sectional track is fortified with added wooden ties, spray-painted flat black to cammo the tie insulators and ballasted. I don't think the appearance of the hand-laid track is better enough to justify all the effort it takes to lay it down. So, I'll pick up a box of junk track at York and use that to slowly replace the hand-spiked track with re-bent sectional track. An upgrade to Gargraves would be nice, but expensive; especially when you consider all the cork roadbed I would need!
I also went around and did a lot of paint touch-ups to my "oatmeal". Now that it is fully cured, there have been cracks opened up that need colored in. No big deal. Actually, it was a good opportunity to add some color to areas that I thought were a little drab anyway.
Well, real RR's have on-going maintenance and so does my hirail RR! I wonder what future maintenance projects will entail. We'll find out soon enough!