Plbab, Welcome to trainboard! Your question was really vauge but I'll throw in 2 cents. I would caution you about soldering rail joints. Temperature changes in the layout room can give soldered rail joints fits. If you are looking to improve electrical current, I would just add more feeder wires. An old timer once told me not to rely on rail joiners for a electrical connection, only a mechanical one, and that has been as right as rain for me! I have known guys who have soldered feeder wires to the rail joiners who swear by this, so I guess your answer might be to try it and see if it works for you! Buy plenty of solder wick! 2slim
OK, let me rephrase that, the soldered rail joints won't be affected by the temperature changes but the track will. Because soldering the joint removes the small space that the rail moves during expansion and contraction when the temperature changes. That makes more sence!!!! 2slim
If you want to solder the rail joints, I would suggest the following procedure: Clean the area to be soldered with a file or wire brush in a rotary tool. Apply a small amount of rosin flux to the area. Use a hot iron and the smallest diameter rosin core solder you can find. Place the solder in the area to be soldered. Touch the soldering iron to the area to be soldered and hold it there until the solder melts. Don't hold the iron to the rail too long or the ties will melt. If you have a problem getting the solder to melt then you probably need a higher wattage iron or you need to clean the tip of the soldering iron.
I agree with slim about not soldering the joiners. I purposely leave a small expansion gap in the rail joins. If you are thinking of doing it to get a good electrical connection, a better way would be to solder flexible wire across the gap, preferably down through the baseboard, or buried in the ballast so it does not show. That way you have the best of both worlds
I know people who solder their flex track and can't figure out the big deal. Some layouts are really affected by heat, humidity and cold, with wild fluctuations. Others live in an area and have a layout in which layout room environmental fluctuation isn't a bid deal, for example a well finished basement layout in Seattle. There is a compromise solution. Solder about 9 feet of flex together then leave gaps, with wire soldered on to bridge the electrical connection. Or to place feeder wires to every track and you don't have to worry about bridging the gap. This is what I will be doing, some soldered, some gapped, but much less gaps than many use. Don't forget it is the subroad bed that determines some of the action on the track. If your subroad bed isn't affected by humidity and temp etc (eg. foam) then you can get away with much less gaps. If you have a garage layout in texas with a wood subroad bed, more gaps might be in order.
On my old layout, every rail joint was soldered. I cut a few expansion gaps and filled them with styrene cut to shape and no problems at all. There was 120 sections of flex track (N scale) and only six expansion gaps. I am doing the same on my new layout. This all started because I found that soldering two sections together while straight , made it far easier to lay it in a curve. That's my experience!
If necessary you can solder rail joiners, but this is not recommended. I would only do it where it would be hard to run a feeder wire to the track. I recommend feeder wires to the track of 18AWG or 20AWG. When soldering track, remember these tips. 1. Clean the area to be soldered. A little bit of rubbing alcohol does wonders to clean the track. 2. Use a good paste flux. Some people prefer liquid, but I found paste to be more preferable. 3. Pre-tin any wires by dipping wire into the flux and putting some solder on it from the tip of a hot iron. 4. Keep the tip of your iron clean, put a little bit of solder on the tip right before you solder the joint. After soldering the joint clean the tip off against a wet sponge to keep solder build-up down. 5. Occassionally unplug the iron, let it cool and take a small file to clean off excess solder. 6. Make sure you use heat sinks to help keep the ties from melting. 7. Work fast, if your soldering takes more than five - seven seconds to melt and flow in, you are doing something wrong. If that happens, clean your iron tip, clean the joint and use a thinner solder. [ 27 May 2002, 04:23: Message edited by: ajy6b ]
All of the above is correct. A point to add: IF you decide to use jumper wires to carry current across a gap, you may wish to solder a rail joiner to only one rail with one end of the jumper wire soldered to it at the same time. Then bend a small "V" or loop (for expansion and contraction) then solder the other end of this wire to the free rail. Both ends of this wire soldered on the outside of the rail of course to avoid the wheel flanges. If you have ever driven past an oil refinery, you may have noticed large loops standing up in rows of big pipes. Those are expansion loops put there for the same reason. Notice how smoothly they have curved those loops. Because you are using solid copper wire, you do NOT want any nicks or sharp bends, because as the copper ages, it will harden. A crack will propagate at the point of greatest stress, (the nick or apex of a sharp bend) and will eventually sever the wire. This is the hardest kind of open circuit to find. It may carry current one day, then not the next. If you have the money, run two AWG #10 or 12 bus wires generally under all your main line track. One is the ground, the other the hot wire. Anywhere convenient drill a 1/16" hole beside the rails on the outside (like at the soldered joiner of that rail section to run your jumper wire through. You can solder it to the bus wires below easily before installing all the scenery. If you do this on every section, you would not need jumper wires that way, and you would never experience a drop in voltage from the distance away from the power pact. You would have also removed all expansion stress on all your rails. This will allow you to test all the rail circuitry while it is clean, and to run an engine over the tracks and make adjustments easily. You will appreciate having excellent trouble free track. Then you can ballast, stain, paint and throw ground foam without losing any electrical integrity. Much easier and neater. And better for DCC too. track within 8 running feet of the power supply will be ok with just the gap jumper wires, but beyond that, and especially if you wish to operate 5 to 8 engines at once, the bus wires will allow you to have full power when you need it. If you are never going to operate but one engine anyway, you probably would not need the buss wires.
