Well what a show. This was my first show and I was amazed at all of the options. I did go with the intention of purchased a lot of track. I called my wife and told her how much I was goin to spend and she hung up on me. So I decided to go an alternate route and I found some used track. For around $60 i was able to add a significant amount of rail to my layout. Of course I got home from the show and started measuring and then Sunday afternoon was spent outside in 30 degrees laying track and seeing how things fit. Everything ran great but as the temp dropped the small 0-4-0 I had pulling 2 cars and a small cabooseslowed and would stop at certain spots, but was running fine while in the sun. Is this normal, was it too cold? I only have rail joiners and am waiting to solder the joints.
Thanks in advance,
Ed
Ed, I've run trains in the teens and twenties without any problems. Maybe you were getting some frost forming on the rails. That would certainly cause trouble. And I suppose it's always possible that some of the joints were effected by the cold. I use rail clamps and or jumper wires on my rails.
Bob
Since it was used track it could have some dirty spots on it. Clean all the rail good with a scrotch brite pad. Should do the trick. Cold wont effect the track unless it gets moister on it and freezes. When my track is dirty it tends to do the same things and its always on the same spots
Train ran great earlier in the day, I did clean the track multiple times. It was odd that it would run fine then when it got a little colder it would abrubtly stop at the same spots each time. I did go around and clean those areas again and it still did the same thing. After I removed the 2 cars and caboose, the 0-4-0 ran fine without stopping. Do you think that the load was too much with the drop in temp? I was able to pull the three cars w/o a problem indoors and earlier in the day.
Also what is the best way to solder wire between the track and what guage do I need? Flux, what solder etc.?
Sorry for all the stupid questions,
Thanks,Ed
In electronics school we were taught electricity always works, it’s the mechanical connections that fail. I would look at the rail joiners; a quick fix is to spray WD40, “Spray and Pray” as we called it at Ma Bell, into the joiner. If your train runs ok that’s where the trouble is. Clean the joiner and apply Ox-Gard paste or you can make a jumper, a piece of wire with spade tip connectors on each end, to bypass the bad spot. I use a modeling knife to pry an opening between the tie strip and rail and insert the connectors with dab of Ox-Gard and bend the ends of the spade tips over the base of the rail. When soldering it takes a lot of heat to get solder to flow on brass rail and ties are plastic.
Have fun, Rob
I soldered jumpers around all of my track joints. It takes a while to do it, but it does solve most of your problems. I used 16 gauge wire, pretinted the wire, cleaned the outside web of the rail where I was going to solder the jumper (with a dremel wire brush), put flux on the location, and used an 80 watt soldering iron, not a gun. You need to tranfer a lot of heat in a short time. A gun doesn't have enough masss to do it. If you don't get a good joint in less than 30 seconds you better quit and try practicing. If it takes longer you're going to start melting ties.
Ed did you get to see the rail clamps Axel of Train-li has???
I use rail clamps with no problems!
Sean
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