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I live in Florida and use dual cab, Atlas flex-track + cork roadbed. I soldered all my track joints and have not encountered any expansion/shrinkage problems. We have a large humidity range here from summer to winter and our railroad is in an un-airconditioned garage. The one place problems appeared was at the one joint where I forgot to solder the joiners. This oversight immediately showed up as an electrical continuity problem. Soldering for dependable electrical connections is not just a good idea. It's mandatory. Rail joiners are only useful for rail alignment. In my experience they are useless for electrical continuity. If you're using DCC, do what the DCCers say and solder feeders to each rail. Otherwise either solder all joints or solder 22 AWG solid wire jumpers between the rails where rail joiners occur. Glueing vs. tacking. 1. Are you superelevating your curves or think you might want to go back and do this? Then tack. Just drill a small hole through the pre-drilled Atlas tie hole with a Dremel bit a size smaller than the rail tacks. Then push it in with your finger plus tool assist if necessary. 2. Ballast plus the adhesive (matte medium, diluted white glue) is what will fix the track in place relative to the cork roadbed. After this is done there won't be any margin for expansion/shrinkage anyway.
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