I am working on my first layout, ho scale. It has 2 separate loops that each form their own circle. It is 8 feet by 20 feet, no switches. I have a Super Chief Extra 8 amp and I am new to dcc. Do I NEED to have gaps in the rail or is that a personal choice do to expansion of the rail? Does each power district need to have a gap in the rail? I am going to have districts with the brake light bulbs attached for short circuit detection. i am familiar with this website(http://www.wiringfordcc.com/track_2.htm ) but it is A LOT to digest!
Thank you.
My railroad, my rules!
Will insulated rail joiners work or is it better to just have gaps cut in the rail?
If you really need gaps to control for track movement, and some insist you don't, you will get different opinions about the plastic joiners. I don't find them appealing, personally, and just prefer the gaps. If you have several around your system, none wider than about 1/16", you won't even know they are there. They will show up in photos, of course, but mostly side-on views of the tracks from close up and at ground level.
The idea for most of us is to solder the curves so that the joints along a curve won't kink. Soldering is better anyway to ensure full continuity electrically. But along the tangent lengths, one or more gaps is cheap insurance against the kinks or buckling one can find when lower humidity causes the benchwork under the tracks, and/or the organic roadbed, to shrink and want to force weakly fixed track together until it has no choice but to deflect sideways or vertically.
As David has implied, though, districts, as a word meaning segregated contiguously powered track regions, are meaningless without true gapping between, or electrical isolation from, other regions of track meant to be controlled separately. No gaps? No districts.
Crandell
Thank you for your responses, this has helped a lot.
If you want to cut gaps for power districts use a piece of styrene to fit the gap and secure with CA. Then trim it to the shape of the rail. Insulated joiners allow the rail to move both verticaly and horozontaly which may not be desireable. They don't look good either. I only use them on switches.
I used the ugly plastic rail joiners and was worried about their looks, after painting the rail and ballasting I now have trouble finding them! I will continue to use them in the future.
Ugly what? The Atlas HO plastic joiners are now clear plastic. Haven't done N scale for 30 years but if they changed the HO ones I would suspect they changed the N scale ones as well, so they aren't that bright "hey look at me!" yellow/orange color like they used to be. I'm just now painting and ballasting my track, haven't crossed one of my power district gaps yet, but I'm torn. The clear palstic joiners are currently invisible, if I paint them - I may draw attention to them!
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
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