The harbor freight anvil has a wider and flatter face, so it was helpful when I wanted to straighten the metal. The train track is harder and has bigger radii on the edges, which helped a lot with forming the curves. Even on the train track, you can see that sometimes the flat face was flattening out the curve.
Not a choice I would recommend. If I recall correctly, my shoes had a hole that kept catching pieces of hot scale and holding them against my skin. I figured barefoot I could just shove my foot in the bucket if necessary. Also, in this case, I was generally holding the metal in my hand, so I wasn't worried about it slipping out of tongs etc.
My thoughts exactly. You can see hot glowing bits of metal flying off as your hammering, and your standing there barefoot.........I am sure you have done this many times and are very experienced. Not everyone out there in RU-vid land are stupid, but perhaps in the future you should think of the idiots in the world who you are setting an example for and who will end up seriously burned.