As I'm drawing up my layout in WinTrack 12 I am not surprised to find that making some of the auto-connections between to points takes a variety of track pieces of various sizes and often oddball fitting (2-3mm offsets). In general I'm wanting to avoid having to make a lot of custom C-track lengths if I can avoid it and will likely use K Flextrack along the longer parade type sections anyway.

So what I'm thinking is using the C-track in areas where it makes sense to me (inside the tunnels, the turnouts and rail yards, and then supplement that with the longer flex k-track runs on Merkur roadbed between.

The C-track in its charcoal grey would not stay that way anyway.. I'm planning to dry brush it at a minimum, or do more colorizing. So the question arises... when having a section of C-Track->Merkur/K-Track->C-Track what treatment do I need to do to each of the 2 types to get them to match up well.

As I mentioned, I'll be doing some painting on the C track as is, but the Merkur roadbed is too orange/brown out of the box to match even with some treatment of the C-Track track bed, so the interest in :

1) Have folks painted their Merkur to change its appearance?

2) If folks have done matching to C-Track bed in some way what works well?

A small amount of manual ballast at the C to K transitions will be needed I assume as the Merkur will only pick up on the proper K-Track, and that is fine.

Merkur:


C-Track:

The latest track plan book from Marklin by Klaus Eckert advocates hybrid C track K track layouts, combining the beauty of the C track wide turnouts with the flowing curves of flex track. This is the book;





When trying to get a ballast match for C track, Merkur they make bags of ballast which matches the K track inserts which could be used to blend the C track with K track see here

Here are a couple of extracts from the above book, showing the results that have been achieved on other layouts;








This final photograph shows one method of ballasting the C track and shows a transition from C track to K track;





NB: If you like the above please support the Author by buying the book


BR

Awesome! I'm so going to buy that book... IF I can find it. Thats always the problem.. finding such things. Amazon.com Amazon.de results in no matches.
What is the ISBN number in the book?

Märklin indicates it is not produced anymore, so buying an original (and thus supporting the author, doesn't seem possible). :(

Is there a source for this book? If not I'm out of luck.

Eurorail hobbies claims it has one in stock but the book doesn't meet their $45 min order requirement to avoid the $15 add-on-small-order-fee. :(
ACJKids isn't clear if they have it in stock or not. Reynaulds is as typical impossible to know if they have it in stock (email sent to them).
Will see what the purchase from ACJKids turns out...