Soldering rail joints

[Anonymous]

Is soldering rail joints worth the time and trouble? Does it make much of a difference? Is it more useful when using DCC?
Reed

[mls1621]

Yes it is worth the trouble, unless you plan to run power to each piece of flex track.

I don't want to over state the obvious, but rails are the conductors of power to your locomotives. Though slight, voltage will drop along the length of the track. Power connections should be placed at regular intervals to prevent voltage drop. Each rail joiner has the potential of being a point of high resistance, causing a voltage drop.

No matter how meticulously you clean the track, you can't get into the rail joiners to eliminate dirt. Making good solder connections at the joiners eliminates that problem.

Get a good soldering iron with a fine tip, thin solid core solder and good flux. It really isn't that big a chore and your locomotives will run alot more consistantly on your layout.

I am using DCC and ran a 14 gauge, solid wire power buss under the bench work. I used 22 gauge solid wire to transfer power to the rails. Regardless of your method of operation, DC or DCC, apply power to the rails every 6' and you can be assured of good operation.


Hope this helps.

Mike
St Louis

[Sperandeo]

Hi Reed,

I solder all rail joints in curved track, whether I'm using flextrack or handlaying. If you solder the joint while the rail is straight and then bend the curve, the track flows smoothly through the joint with no kinks or gaps. Generally I leave rail joints in straight track unsoldered, and leave a gap the width of an NMRA gauge between the rail ends to allow for expansion.

Soldering rail joints does help with electrical conduct, since it makes a solid current path through the joint that can't be degraded by dirt, paint, or oxidation getting in between the joiner and the rail. However, I make a practice of soldering a feeder to every length of rail, so I'm really not depending on the rail joints to carry current anyway.

(I use the spike-head feeder method shown on page 109 of my book, "Easy Model Railroad Wiring." Since these connections are invisible when the track is painted and weathered there's no reason not to have lots of them.)

And thanks, Reed, for signing your name.

Happy New Year,

Andy

[Anonymous]

Funny you should ask, as tonight, I am soldering several joints that are slowly (ie, through paint and dirt accumulation) or adding feeders.

Generally, I solder all pieces of track to either a feeder wire or another piece of track that has a feeder wire. Over time, as noted, the rail joiners just don't stay in electrical conductive mode.

So, while you have the soldering iron out, just go ahead and solder those joints!

[cacole]

Yes, solder the rail joints, especially for DCC. This may be a little bit of overkill, but I wired the Cochise & Western Model Railroad Club's 20x40 foot HO-scale layout with nothing smaller than 24 gauge stranded speaker wire with feeder wires at every flex track joint. On every-other joint, the feeder wires were soldered in such a way that the rail joiners were not soldered to the track, to allow for rail expansion and contraction. Another good rule is to never solder a turnout. Of all the trackage, a turnout has the only moving parts, so if anything ever needs to be replaced it will probably be a turnout. In a couple of instances where I did need to provide power to a Peco turnout on a siding that was insulated from the main line, I soldered the feeder wires to the outside rails on each side near the center of the turnout, but I never solder the rail joints at turnouts. If we ran only DCC, insulated track joints would not have been necessary; however, the club layout is wired so people can run either conventional DC block control or DCC. With DCC, good electrical feeds to the track are essential to avoid erratic operation.

[Anonymous]

I soldered my rail joints and enjoyed a substantial operational improvement. Soldering was most efficacious on my common rail. Since my blocks are short, the improvement in operation from soldering the non-common rail was less noticeable.

One regret: I did not solder the joints in my buried reversing loop. I'm sure this will bite me in time.

George

[DSchmitt]

No, Its better to solder a jumper wire across the joint. Much easier than trying to get a good (conducting) joint between the joiner and the rail.

The only time its necessary to solder a rail joint is a place where the joiner alone will not hold the rails in alignment (for instance flex track in the middle of a curve)

[Anonymous]

When I started my new layout, I used DCC for the first time. I was paranoid about connectivity problems. I read up on this a lot--an especially good source is a web site called wiringfordcc.com. I solder all joint (except turnouts) and wire each piece of track with its own feeder. I used 14 gauge wire for the bus lines and 18 guage wire for the feeders. I connect the wires under the table with Radio Shack barrier strips. While I may have overreacted and engaged in a little bit of overkill, I have not experienced any problems, unlike some of my friends who converted their layouts to DCC.

In southern California many modelers build their layoutsin garages which creat additional issues, such as keeping the track clean and weather extremes that result in expansion/contraction of the track. If you are building a layout under these conditions, I thing that soldering the rails and using lots of feeder wires will improve operations significantly.