Allegheny2-6-6-6I had thoughts of soldering three lengths of flex track together before on the workbench and then lay the track.
I also never solder unless it is flex track on a curve. Done in place one can loose zero ties. My soldered joints end up looking like this:
Your thoughts are appreciated and how do you solder and weather etc.
Good link. Merely searching YouTube with broad terms such as "model RR, HO railroads", etc will give you a large list of videos on track laying, scenery, working with foam, etc. to kill an entire weekend.
I recently stumbled across a multi-part instruction on YouTube.com that probably will answer most of your questions. Check out http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=laying+flex+track&aq=f and see what you think. Please keep in mind that the presenter is NOT and actor and is videoing himself unassisted. Having said that, there is a lot to learn in his presentations.
Ray
"Keeping my hand on the throttle...and my eyes on rail."
if you paint the track before bending it, you will get a bunch of silver spots on the sides of the rails when in moves to make the curves.
grizlump
I solder feeders to the bottom of the rail and drill the holes for the wires before laying the track.
That way, they don't show at all.
You could solder two pieces of flex track together into one unit, but I think three would be a bit unwieldy at 9' long. BTW you could use Atlas joiners with the wires already attached...put them on as the joiners between the two pieces of flex track, then solder the joiners and rails together.
I prefer to paint the rail and ties before installing. I 'paint' the rails with Neo-lube, an electronics lubricant that dries to a flat dark gray (and conducts electricity) and then paint about half the ties with different colors like brown, dark gray etc. leaving about half black.