Dave, I use both layers and surfaces. The surfaces to represent the different levels of terrain, piling one atop the other to build mountains. And layers are a great way to be able to remove and replace entire portions of the layout to see and manipulate the items at lower layers.
It takes a while to remember to think in terms of layers, I am always forgetting to change layers when I change from working on one aspect to another, but even so, its a great tool/concept.
For me, Anyrail is a great system to get good looking plans and complex track plans designed in a modest amount of time with any track system. Often, getting the Fastrack fixed sections to align and join is a real time-consuming pain, requiring lots of time in experimentation and adjusting track and curve diameter here and there and combinations of small track sections, in order to close the shape. I set my limit at a small 3/32" tolerance across even a long section of track (and zero degrees of curvature deviation - this has to be perfect in my plans), even when a larger "gap" would be fine across the length of a long runs of say 10' of track. And then more time going over the layouts to optimize the curvature and alignments. This is a result/aspect of using Fastrack that requires tight tolerances in order to close nicely.
Other sectional track systems with rail joiners have much more play, and with flex track, even more flexibility, and go together more quickly. But I stay with the same tight tolerances that I use with Fastrack, as I am a bit of a perfectionist. But flextrack helps a lot. Or even using custom cut sections of straight track, and occasionally I cut curved sections in half or thirds, but that is a multi-step process.
--Ken
