Wire Connections to Track

[Anonymous]

Does anyone have an example of how the wire connects to the track. My books arer not clear on this. They show soldering, but not the actual connection from the wire to the track. Sorry for the the dumb question, but I cant quite tell how this works. Where is the hole drilled? Inside/outside the track, etc, what part of the track (is it soldered to the rail connecting joints?) I am not looking for a "how to" book on basic wiring, I just want to know where to put the damn connection! Thanks!

[egmurphy]

Greg,

Normally you'd solder the wire to the outside of the rail, where the bottom flange and vertical web meet. So you'd be drilling the hole just outside the rail.

On my N scale layout I've soldered the wires to the underside of some of the track connectors, so I've drilled the hole centered on the rail, just at the end of the section i want to connect.

Regards

Ed

[rrinker]

Or you can always cheat like I do and solder feeders to rail joiners. I make up a couple dozen ahead of time, and EVERY rail joint is fed power. That means even a full 3' section of flex track has TWO sources of power. Overkill? Maybe, but my trains never slow down or stutter, and there's no real cost involved, as you would need the rail joiners anyway. Plus there's no chance for an oops ruining a piece of already fastened down track. I would rate my soldering skills pretty high (I've done everything from build complete computers to plumbing and other metal work) and I STILL sometimes melt or disfigure a tie here and there. By building terminal joiners at the bench there's no chance to melt anything.

--Randy