I built my previous layout that had about 500 feet of track. I handlaid it all. I bought some switches that were all the rail prefabed and soldered on straps. You spiked them down, and then removed the straps. Than I just started buying point and frog assemblies, it was cheaper. A few switches were scratch built. It started slow, but I learned and found I lay about 6-9 feet of track an hour, maybe more. It was a 2 step process. I made a tie jig a bit longer than 24 inches where I could set in ties at the spacing I wanted for 24 inches of track. I then laid a strip of masking tape on the ties and lifted the string out of the jig and turned it upside down. I put white glue on the ties and then set them in place where I wanted the track to be. I would do a bunch of that one evening, and then come back the next evening and lay rail on the ties. It seems daunting until you try it.
On my current layout, I handlaid all my yard area. I wanted the yard to look buried in the dirt and stuff and was thinking about how much material that would take over the ties. Then I cam up with the idea to just lay a piece of luann underlayment plywood over the area and just spike the rail to that. It came out just fine.
With turnouts getting close to 100 apiece, an option is to buy cast points and frogs which are availalbe from one of the suppliers, Old Pullman maybe. That is a pretty easy way to hand lay switches. One idea a friend used was to glue the ties for a switch to a piece of roadbed he was using and then build the switch on his workbench. he could then tack it in place on the layout and if needed remove it without destroying again (for reuse).
One than that helps a lot with hand laying is to get a couple of 3 point track gauges that allow you to hold the second rail in gauge hands free while you spike. You lay the first rail, and then gauge the second to it. Back in the day I did, I estimate the cost of buying ties and rails was about 1/3 the cost of prefab track.
