Your on to something there Kevin.
Stainless steel is a relatively good electrical conductor. I guess that would make too much sense.
I also wish they would make 8 foot rails that you feed into the 30 inch tie strips and have less joints on our curves
Stuff gets dirty, so will nickle silver or whatever other material. Many materials corrode or become otherwise compromised by well-known issues. But it's important not to confuse the two. You can do something about dirty track. Track that itself deteriorates is basically unsolvable without switching to something different.
N-S track never promised that it wouldn't need cleaning, simply that it would largely solve the problems associated with other track materials like brass or steel.
If you have a dirty track problem with N-S rail, then you either quit making it dirty or you figure a better way to clean it. It's not the track material that's the problem, but dirt and crud. If you don't solve the cleaning puzzle (depending on your local environment and other factors) they will still affect performance, even if the rail is gold.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
Gold plated rails would do the trick. Of course the plating has to be thick since it is soft and will wear faster.
SeeYou190How about a $45.00 turnout that solves all my problems to go along with it? I would pay $12.00 for a piece of flex track that is bullet proof and never needs to be cleaned.
Of course the cost will be considerably higher than what you're willing to pay.
SeeYou190Why do we not have a better, and more expensive, option to choose from?
There is. The answer is S scale. I never clean my NS track. Apparently the heavier locomotive makes better contact.
Paul
Stainless steel does sound like the ticket, but...(and I'm the furthest from a specialist in metallurgy one could point at), it's quite a bit more costly to produce, and the tooling to make rail-shaped wire out of it would be costly and have to be replaced often as stainless steel is hard. Nickel silver is like Gruyer cheese compared to stainless steel. Then, there's that brittleness problem; NS has it all over stainless when it comes to bending it time in and time out.
A good question. And excellent points so far by all. We'll surely get a few electrical engineers and metalurgists to respond. They will likely speak of two issues. First, the material itself and such things as innate internal resistance, as some metals pass current (my old Navy electronic instructors called it "hole flow") more readily that others, The second regards the micro deposits produced when the transfer of that current passes between dissimilar materials (the rails and your engine and car pickups). And remember, there's still going to be dust and natural oxidation (look what happens to copper even without its being used as a conductor). More or less, our lot is to clean until we croak.
I understand the best is gold. Presuming an alloy that looked like steel, are we willing to go that far? Well, it might have a nice side benefit: in the case of an economic meltdown, we could turn our industrial spurs into food, clothing, gas and ammunition - not necessarily in that order, of course!
On occasion we are frustrated by the advance of technology because we assume that for most everything it should be almost unbounded, subject only to innovation. And as far as everyday consumers are concerned, economics. But in material matters, physics and chemistry establish the ultimate parameters. We could reset this entire issue into the realm of health. Why have we not yet gotten to the point of living until 500 or, being not too greedy, just 200? And if not even 200, why can't we at least look like we're 30 until we die?
Try to solder a wire to stainless steel track and you know why we are still with nickel silver!
Sir Madog Try to solder a wire to stainless steel track and you know why we are still with nickel silver!
Yup. Your right. I guess I never thought about that.
Stainless steel is one of the hardest Alloys to weld and it takes a fine tuned Craftsman to do it.
Your point is well taken.
Attuvian I think that it's the silver component of nickel-silver that makes it a far better conductor than brass.
I think that it's the silver component of nickel-silver that makes it a far better conductor than brass.
Except that there is no silver in nickel-silver.
And it is a worse conductor than brass.
Ed
[edit]
Brass has a resistivity of 6-8 microhm-cm, nickel silver is 20. Thus brass is about 3 times as conductive as nickel silver.
7j43k Attuvian I think that it's the silver component of nickel-silver that makes it a far better conductor than brass. Except that there is no silver in nickel-silver. And it is a worse conductor than brass. Ed
I will buy into your statement is true. It does make sense that we would be paying a lot more if it did have a percentage of silver content.
If it's not silver what is it, and why do they call it silver?
Is there also no silver content in Silver solder?
Track fiddler I will buy into your statement is true. It does make sense that we would be paying a lot more if it did have a percentage of silver content. If it's not silver what is it, and why do they call it silver?
Because if it's got the word "silver" in the term, people will pay more for it.
There is silver in all the various silver solders I've ever used.
Track fiddlerIs there also no silver content in Silver solder?
Silver bearing solder has silver in it.
mlehman Stuff gets dirty, so will nickle silver or whatever other material. Many materials corrode or become otherwise compromised by well-known issues. But it's important not to confuse the two. You can do something about dirty track. Track that itself deteriorates is basically unsolvable without switching to something different. N-S track never promised that it wouldn't need cleaning, simply that it would largely solve the problems associated with other track materials like brass or steel. If you have a dirty track problem with N-S rail, then you either quit making it dirty or you figure a better way to clean it. It's not the track material that's the problem, but dirt and crud. If you don't solve the cleaning puzzle (depending on your local environment and other factors) they will still affect performance, even if the rail is gold.
This point also well taken.
Pollution, dust, cigarette or cigar smoke, cooking, shedded skin, pet dander, you name it it's all in the air.
It gets hammered down to the rails by the little steel wheels rolling over and over again and again.
Track fiddlerIf it's not silver what is it, and why do they call it silver?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_silver
Track fiddler Is there also no silver content in Silver solder?
Yes, there is silver in silver solder, but that is a very different animal and not much use in our hobby. It has a higher melting (and flowing) temperature; in the range of 900 degrees to 1350 degrees depending on the composition. It can not be used with a Weller 40 watt iron, a fairly hot flame is needed.
As for using actual silver in the rails . . . it is not as ridiculous as it sounds, and probably not as expensive as you might think. Sterling silver (92.5%) would be excellent, coin silver (90%) would be every bit as good. Billion silver (40%) would be leap years ahead of our current brassy 'nickel silver'. Any alloy with significant amounts of silver would extrude well, conduct electricity well, flex extremely well, and tarnish to a very pleasing shade of gray. The railhead contact surface would gleam to a realistic mirrored edge. Most of the cost of manufacture for the current brass (yes, 'nickel silver' is actually brass) flextrack is in the tooling and workmanship, not the materials.
Robert
LINK to SNSR Blog
Thanks for the info.
Learning a little something new everyday is a good thing.
It´s called nickel silver because it is as shiny as silver and has been employed as "fake" silver in household goods and jewelry.
selectorNickel silver is like Gruyer cheese compared to stainless steel.
The answer has been staring us in the face all along! Use Gruyere cheese for rail. After all we are moving to battery power anyway so conductivity and solder-ability will soon be irrelevant. We could bake our ties out of cracker dough and lightly melt the Gruyere cheese rails onto the ties. And best of all we'd finally have the respect of the French, which is so important.
Dave Nelson
SeeYou190Why are we still dealing with 1978 technology in trackage?
Kevin,Excellent question.
Let's start with my beef. Track is a model too and why does it still look like brass track from the 50s? Even C83 is clunky and toyish looking.
C70 rail would have been the better choice by far.
Regardless if flex track cost 99 cents or $99.00 it would still need cleaning because track cleaning worries has been shoved down our throats by the "experts".
I've said it before even with my DCC/Sound engines I still haven't found the need to constantly clean track. I still use nothing but,a old school bright boy that still works as far as cleaning track on a as needed bases.
I also think the decoders that features "Keep Alive" technology just may be the best thing since peanut butter and jelly.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
I stand corrected. Thanks, Ed.
SeeYou190 OK, the cost of everything in Model Railroading has gone way up... that is fine and reality. Quality of everything is really much better... that is great. . How come we do not have a better choice for rail than Nickel Silver? When I began back in the 1970s, brass was bad, nickel silver was great because it had a conductive oxide and never needed to be cleaned. Tyco Tru-Steel was not successful as an alternative. . OK, we know that nickel silver track still needs to be cleaned, just see all the threads about this. The conductive oxide promise did not formulate well. . Why do we not have a better, and more expensive, option to choose from? There must be something better to make model rail from. Some sort of stainless steel? Some semi-precious alloy? . I have stated before that I think track is still the weakest point in this hobby, and something we all have in common to deal with no matter what your era or prototype. . Why are we still dealing with 1978 technology in trackage? . Walthers is releasing a $25.00 switch motor that looks "A+ #1 Fantastic!" . How about a $45.00 turnout that solves all my problems to go along with it? I would pay $12.00 for a piece of flex track that is bullet proof and never needs to be cleaned. . -Kevin .
OK, the cost of everything in Model Railroading has gone way up... that is fine and reality. Quality of everything is really much better... that is great.
.
How come we do not have a better choice for rail than Nickel Silver? When I began back in the 1970s, brass was bad, nickel silver was great because it had a conductive oxide and never needed to be cleaned. Tyco Tru-Steel was not successful as an alternative.
OK, we know that nickel silver track still needs to be cleaned, just see all the threads about this. The conductive oxide promise did not formulate well.
Why do we not have a better, and more expensive, option to choose from? There must be something better to make model rail from. Some sort of stainless steel? Some semi-precious alloy?
I have stated before that I think track is still the weakest point in this hobby, and something we all have in common to deal with no matter what your era or prototype.
Why are we still dealing with 1978 technology in trackage?
Walthers is releasing a $25.00 switch motor that looks "A+ #1 Fantastic!"
How about a $45.00 turnout that solves all my problems to go along with it? I would pay $12.00 for a piece of flex track that is bullet proof and never needs to be cleaned.
-Kevin
Kevin, you are welcome to pay $45 for a turnout, I will stick with my $15 Atlas Custom Line, since I don't have any "issues" with them.
Same goes for flex track, Atlas works good and I buy it by the box of 300' for $400, not interested in paying 3 times that.
As noted by others, dirt and oxidation are two different problems.
Build your layout in a cleaner environment, run your trains more, you will clean track less.
Switch motor? Are you refering to the new ones from Rapdio? They look interesting, but again, pricey.
I don't use switch motors on turnouts that would be manually thrown on the prototype, so their switch stand feature does not interest me. But I'm sure it will be useful to many.
I only use switch motors for turnouts under CTC control......
I only have part of my old layout running while I am rebuilding it, but trains run just fine even after sitting a few weeks?
Sheldon
SeeYou190OK, we know that nickel silver track still needs to be cleaned, just see all the threads about this. The conductive oxide promise did not formulate well.
Kevin,
What's not known is how people actually clean their track. NS track comes fairly polished - i.e. at least at eye level - and really doesn't need much to keep it claan. Unfortunately, once locos start hesitating, out comes the Brite Boy (or some kind of abrasive medium ) and that once finely-polished rail finish now has micro-scratches larger than the original. This then exacerbates the problem by capturing dirt and crud more quickly; giving the illusion that track needs to be cleaned all the time to work well.
Other factors are also important:
These all can have effects on how well your layout operates and how often you need to clean the tracks for consistent operation.
My layout is/was in a finished, dry basement controlled by a dehumidifier. No one smokes in my household and we do not have any pets. The concrete floor is also carpeted. That said, I rarely needed to clean my track more than once or twice a year - if that - and I primarily used 91% alcohol to accomplish that.
So, yes - NS track is not as conductive as brass or copper. However, it's adequate enough and fairly inexpensive to produce. "Properly" caring for the surface of your track and keeping it as scratch-free as possible is the best proponent for a well-operating layout and reduces the amount of cleaning required drastically.
Tom
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
I found a chart listing the best alloys / elements to conduct electricity. The top 6 were 1. silver 2. copper 3. gold 4. aluminum 5. zinc. 6. nickel.
All track no mater what material will need to be cleaned if you want to have electrical conductivity. Dust is not very conductive (its made of dead skin cells, animal dander, hair particles, etc).
SeeYou190Why do we not have a better, and more expensive, option to choose from? There must be something better to make model rail from. Some sort of stainless steel? Some semi-precious alloy?
It has to be soft enough to cut with standard tools, otherwise you will need to purchase more expensive tools to cut your rail.
Why are some people still using 1950s technology to power their trains?
SeeYou190I would pay $12.00 for a piece of flex track that is bullet proof and never needs to be cleaned.
Have you considered battery on board? In that case I have a whole pile of Atlas Code 100 flex track that I would love to sell for $12 each.
Of course when you go that route you have to remember to charge your train before running.
Nickle-Silver? Well, when you understand what it really is it makes sense.
What it is is an alloy of copper and nickle. It goes back to the 19th Century and has gone by various names such as cupro-nickle, German silver, silverode and silveroid. It was popular for decorative effects on various things for its good looks and corrosion resistance. It was used for pocket watch casings and for a time for bullet jacketing.
The corrosion resistance and good electical conductivity has made it also popular for model train trackage. I'm and O gauger and use MTH nickle-silver track just for that reason. How much it dirties depends on what I'm running. Post-war Lionels don't dirty the tracks, in fact they polish it, but the current product with traction tires do tend to dirty it. Oh well, out comes the rag and the alcohol and a few minutes work to clean it.
The subject of stainless steel has come up. Bear in mind there's various grades of stainless, some better than others. The best grades of stainless won't attract a magnet, however those grades are the toughest to work with. A machinist friend of mine once told me working with stainless steel can reduce a grown man to tears!
To my mind, nickle-silver is the best way to go all-round. Nothing's perfect.
BRAKIELet's start with my beef. Track is a model too and why does it still look like brass track from the 50s? Even C83 is clunky and toyish looking.
Atlas code 100 flex ties are out of scale (too wide). Which is why I'm re-laying it on wood ties.
Depends on what you model.
PRR main line, and you need code 92 (ish). Modern mainlines, code 83 works just fine.
http://wpporter.worthygems.com/railweight.php
Firelock76What it is is an alloy of copper and nickle.
and usually zinc...
Do we all know that there is NO SILVER in nickel siver?
Nickel Silver is 46-63 % copper, 18-36% zinc, and 6-36% nickel. One reason to use in MR rail is the oxide is coductive. So I reallity we are just cleaning off the dirt? Cleaning your rail with a Bright Boy ( or sand papper) will scratch the rail which will hold more dirt.
inho...stainless steel rail would not work. It's conductance is one thing...but it's contact resistance performance is really bad. Peugot, in their infinite wisdom, made their separable headlight connectors out of stainless. They had to be literally scrubbed clean every few weeks to keep the headlights lit. Gold contact resistance is superb (cost be darned) but it's wear resistance is negligible..platinum or palladium might be better than so-called nickel silver but maybe not...crud is crud and that is our bigger problem in modelrailroading and crud contact resistance problems would overshadow any (marginal) improvement in oxide contact resistance...
dknelson selector Nickel silver is like Gruyer cheese compared to stainless steel. The answer has been staring us in the face all along! Use Gruyere cheese for rail. After all we are moving to battery power anyway so conductivity and solder-ability will soon be irrelevant. We could bake our ties out of cracker dough and lightly melt the Gruyere cheese rails onto the ties. And best of all we'd finally have the respect of the French, which is so important. Dave Nelson
selector Nickel silver is like Gruyer cheese compared to stainless steel.
Slight correction - Gruyere is in Switzerland. Gruyere cheese is the one that goes into the famous Swiss cheese fondue.
Nickel silver is probably one of the best compromises that can be made. It's realtively inexpensive, is easily machined, and the oxide is not an insulator. It's also very flexible. Lots of other options come to mind if you just think about electrical conductivity but they all have issues - far more serious than the lower conductivity of the nickel silver. They are either too expensive (silver, gold), too soft (gold for sure), or the oxides are not conductive (aluminum, copper). Or hard to machine (stainless steel).
I rarely need to do any track cleaning. Once you've gone down the road with abrasive cleaners, you're not stuck, because the scratches will attract and hold dirt, microscopic though they may be. I do part of the 'gleam' proocess - mainly, the burnishing of the railhead with a hardened metal tool. That alone seems to work just fine as the worst I get is some surface dust from the room, if I haven't run trains for a while. Lots of running, and all metal wheels on the cars, keeps the track clean.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
If you have done your layout construction properly, the fact that nickel silver rail is less conductive than brass (or silver) is unimportant. That is because you put supply taps on the nickel silver rail often enough so that the high(er) resistance is not a problem. And you use copper wire of an adequate size to distribute power to those taps.
So the level of resistance of any metal rail you choose to use should be irrelevant.
rrinker Nickel silver...the oxide is not an insulator.
Nickel silver...the oxide is not an insulator.
I don't think there IS an oxide of nickel silver. I think oxides form from elemental metals, not full alloys. Thus there are copper oxides, zinc oxides, and nickel oxides. And there are not brass oxides or nickel silver oxides.
The brass used in our rail is an alloy of (mostly) copper and zinc.
The nickel silver used in our rail is an alloy of (mostly) copper, nickel and zinc.
The difference, of course, is the nickel. I suspect the presence of the nickel inhibits formation of copper oxide. And perhaps zinc oxide.
Thus brass rail forms copper and/or zinc oxides more readily than nickel silver rail.
Marklin track is made out of some sort of stainless steel. Yes it does stay clean more, but care must be taken when soldering and also the flex-track is more difficult (imho) to bend and make it follow curves (it is more springy).
Forgot to mention that i just gave this as an example, since being 3-rail track, it is of no use to 2-rail DC/DCC users.
I have some shell (ammo) casings from WW2 that are brass. They are on a shelf in the same room as the railroad. There is not one tiny bit of corrosion on any of them. But the brass track that I had would turn green in a few weeks.
Maybe the the rail needs to be made of a better alloy.
The proper alloy of aluminum would work too. Check out the aluminum wheels being used on tractor-trailers these day. They never need polished and they don't corrode. But aluminum does not have much springiness. Once bent, it's bent forever. But again, the proper alloy would probably work.
Aluminum alloy track is already available for garden railways, but aluminum also corrodes, even disintegrates, has a bad conductivity and cannot be soldered.
mlehman...If you have a dirty track problem with N-S rail, then you either quit making it dirty or you figure a better way to clean it. It's not the track material that's the problem, but dirt and crud. If you don't solve the cleaning puzzle (depending on your local environment and other factors) they will still affect performance, even if the rail is gold.
Mike got it right early on.
I clean track, in the traditional sense, only after ballasting or doing scenery work near the tracks, as the dilute white glue used to hold things in place does creep up onto the rails due to the use of "wet" water. Because I usually do trackside scenery along with ballasting, the drying time may be several days - it's pointless to clean the rails until everything has dried completely. I use a mildly abrasive block meant for cleaning contact points in electrical devices.Once the track has been cleaned in that manner, any further cleaning required is done with my shop vac, and that is, at most, once a year. The key to eliminating track cleaning is to eliminate, as much as possible, the source of the dirt which is causing the problem. It is not the oxidation on the rails.My layout is in an unheated and uncooled basement room, well insulated and with finished walls, suspended ceiling, no windows, and a door. The floor, unpainted concrete, is never swept, only vacuumed (much more often than the track or layout).From what I've seen, too many of us are in a rush to run trains, and overlook the environment in which we run them: open joists and flooring overhead, unfinished conrete block walls or open studs, no physical isolation from sources of dirt, carpeted floors, and plenty of non-layout related traffic from other household members. Yeah, we can't all have a dedicated train room, but more attention (and money) needs to be spent on the environment of many layouts.If I had to clean track as often as many here seem to do, I would leave the hobby.
BMMECNYCSeeYou190 Why are we still dealing with 1978 technology in trackage? Why are some people still using 1950s technology to power their trains?
Well, I can only speak for my own experience, but DC offers everything I require: I'm a solo operator, I don't like or want sound (or lighting effects, either), and I regularly run double headers, pushers, etc. using a tethered walkaround type of throttle. If the tether bothered me (it doesn't), I'd get wireless throttles like those used by Sheldon.
BMMECNYCBRAKIE Let's start with my beef. Track is a model too and why does it still look like brass track from the 50s? Even C83 is clunky and toyish looking. Atlas code 100 flex ties are out of scale (too wide). Which is why I'm re-laying it on wood ties.
7j43kIf you have done your layout construction properly, the fact that nickel silver rail is less conductive than brass (or silver) is unimportant. That is because you put supply taps on the nickel silver rail often enough so that the high(er) resistance is not a problem. And you use copper wire of an adequate size to distribute power to those taps....
Ed, until I added a partial second level to my layout, I was operating over 200' of track (not counting passing sidings and industrial tracks) powered through these...
That operation included multiple locomotives (in some cases, more than a dozen) and heavy trains on lots of 2.5% grades. Granted, this is DC operation, which perhaps is less finicky than DCC.
The second level added roughly another 80' of main line (with all the usual passing sidings and industrial tracks) and the trains still ran reliably. However, just to be on the safe side, I did add some heavier feeders while things were accessible enough to do so easily, but there is no bus wire. It's DC, but with no complicated wiring, as I'm the sole operator.
If you have a dedicated room for your layout and you finish it to a standard in which you'd be comfortable living, it's much easier to clean the room than it is to clean the track, and you'll have to do it less often, too.
Wayne
SouthPenn I have some shell (ammo) casings from WW2 that are brass. They are on a shelf in the same room as the railroad. There is not one tiny bit of corrosion on any of them. But the brass track that I had would turn green in a few weeks.
I have found that if I polish brass and NEVER touch it, it stays pretty darn shiny for a very long time (years). And if I handle it, it, uh, doesn't. Human skin oils are pretty aggressive on metal surfaces.
Another thing that can happen is galvanic corrosion. I'm assuming you put power on those brass rails. And you may have also added, accidentally or on purpose, some chemicals to the mix. Something your casings didn't have to face.
First, I want to endorse everything Wayne says about cleanliness. I'll even go a bit further, and suggest sealing a concrete floor. When your shoes slide on an untreated concrete surface, they rub off a little of it.
Anyway:
doctorwayne Ed, until I added a partial second level to my layout, I was operating over 200' of track (not counting passing sidings and industrial tracks) powered through these... That operation included multiple locomotives (in some cases, more than a dozen) and heavy trains on lots of 2.5% grades. Granted, this is DC operation, which perhaps is less finicky than DCC. Wayne
Wayne,
Are you saying that there is only one supply point on the track to supply 200'?
And are you saying that you have run more than a dozen locomotives AT ONCE?
Our club (www.pmrrc.org) uses hand-laid steel rail. Great stuff, nearly indestructible (a lot of the track was laid between 1979 and the early 80s, and I think some sections go back to the '60s), and considering all the miles we run, the maintenance is pretty low; we usually give it a good cleaning once or twice a year. Chief disadvantage is that most of the dirt gets picked up by the steel wheels, which get a pretty good layer of crud on them. We have no high-tech reason for using steel; AFAIK it's what was avaialble when the club built its first layout in the 1950s, and the habit stuck.
It's not that DCC is more finicky, it's that the voltage on the rails in DC directly controls the speed, so if there is a slow and gradual voltage drop, you don't see it and/or automatically compensate by turning the speed control up a bit. I ran an 8x12 double track layout with DCC on one pair of feeders as well, no problems. Hooking up all the rest of the feeder drops didn't change things, either. There's nothing more finickey about DCC, as long as the voltage remains above the specified minimum there should not be any control issue - and it takes a LOT of nickle silver rail and/or a huge load of powered equipment to cause the voltage to drop from the nominal output at the main booster to a level below the NMRA specifications.
At the same time, I had a basic 4x8 oval of Bachmann EZ Track running on DC and the locos noticeably slowed at the furthest point from the power pack. I had to add extra feeders to fix this. Being sectional track, thre were more joints in this 4x8 oval then there were in the 8x12. This is the real cause of issues over long track runs with few feeders.
That 8x12 also ran in a basement with open ceiling joists and unfinished poured concrete walls and floor. Outside of cleanup after painting the rails, I didn't clean the track on that one, either. Just a light brushing to remove loose dust on occasion. No liquids, no abrasives. I still contend that anything that STAYS wet on the rails only makes it worse.
ROBERT PETRICKYes, there is silver in silver solder, but that is a very different animal and not much use in our hobby. It has a higher melting (and flowing) temperature; in the range of 900 degrees to 1350 degrees depending on the composition. It can not be used with a Weller 40 watt iron, a fairly hot flame is needed.
I use silver-bearing solder all the time, in fact almost exclusively around the layout. I have some old irons around, but mostly use a Radio Shack solder station set to 680 degrees.
I use the stuff for two reasons. When building anything out of brass, etc that is solderable, it's easy to see progress, make strong joints or to change something once it's tacked together.
Then there's wiring. Almost anything we're liable to solder has the potential yo snag, be yanked, or otherwise abused, whether under the layout or beneath the sheels of a loco with sound. Silver-bearing solder makes these connection much sturdier and less likely to cause a problem later.
rrinker It's not that DCC is more finicky, it's that the voltage on the rails in DC directly controls the speed, so if there is a slow and gradual voltage drop, you don't see it and/or automatically compensate by turning the speed control up a bit. I ran an 8x12 double track layout with DCC on one pair of feeders as well, no problems. Hooking up all the rest of the feeder drops didn't change things, either. There's nothing more finickey about DCC, as long as the voltage remains above the specified minimum there should not be any control issue - and it takes a LOT of nickle silver rail and/or a huge load of powered equipment to cause the voltage to drop from the nominal output at the main booster to a level below the NMRA specifications. At the same time, I had a basic 4x8 oval of Bachmann EZ Track running on DC and the locos noticeably slowed at the furthest point from the power pack. I had to add extra feeders to fix this. Being sectional track, thre were more joints in this 4x8 oval then there were in the 8x12. This is the real cause of issues over long track runs with few feeders. That 8x12 also ran in a basement with open ceiling joists and unfinished poured concrete walls and floor. Outside of cleanup after painting the rails, I didn't clean the track on that one, either. Just a light brushing to remove loose dust on occasion. No liquids, no abrasives. I still contend that anything that STAYS wet on the rails only makes it worse. --Randy
Did a quarter trip the DCC circuit breaker prior to adding additional feeders?
mlehman ROBERT PETRICK Yes, there is silver in silver solder, but that is a very different animal and not much use in our hobby. It has a higher melting (and flowing) temperature; in the range of 900 degrees to 1350 degrees depending on the composition. It can not be used with a Weller 40 watt iron, a fairly hot flame is needed. I use silver-bearing solder all the time, in fact almost exclusively around the layout. I have some old irons around, but mostly use a Radio Shack solder station set to 680 degrees. I use the stuff for two reasons. When building anything out of brass, etc that is solderable, it's easy to see progress, make strong joints or to change something once it's tacked together. Then there's wiring. Almost anything we're liable to solder has the potential yo snag, be yanked, or otherwise abused, whether under the layout or beneath the sheels of a loco with sound. Silver-bearing solder makes these connection much sturdier and less likely to cause a problem later.
ROBERT PETRICK Yes, there is silver in silver solder, but that is a very different animal and not much use in our hobby. It has a higher melting (and flowing) temperature; in the range of 900 degrees to 1350 degrees depending on the composition. It can not be used with a Weller 40 watt iron, a fairly hot flame is needed.
Sorry for the confusion.
In the old days I made jewelry for fun and profit (actually, not a whole lot of profit) and was talking about the silver solder I used. That solder contains between 45% (soft) to 80% (hard) silver. The silver-bearing solder you use is about 60% lead, 38% tin, and 2% silver. So, yes, it also contains silver.
7j43k First, I want to endorse everything Wayne says about cleanliness. I'll even go a bit further, and suggest sealing a concrete floor. When your shoes slide on an untreated concrete surface, they rub off a little of it. Anyway: doctorwayne Ed, until I added a partial second level to my layout, I was operating over 200' of track (not counting passing sidings and industrial tracks) powered through these... That operation included multiple locomotives (in some cases, more than a dozen) and heavy trains on lots of 2.5% grades. Granted, this is DC operation, which perhaps is less finicky than DCC. Wayne Wayne, Are you saying that there is only one supply point on the track to supply 200'? And are you saying that you have run more than a dozen locomotives AT ONCE? Ed
I'm not speaking directly for Wayne, but yes you can feed 200' of track from one feeder and run DC just fine.
As a confirmed DC operator, using 1980's radio throttle technology, I solder all my rail joints within each electrical section, or "block".
Rail joints are the big voltage drop problem, not the rail itself.
No I have never had expansion or contraction issues.......every layout I have ever built had soldered rail joints.
I don't have a 200' section like Wayne, but many of my blocks are 30'-40' long, with just a single feeder, works fine.
My first layout had two indepenent loops of TruScale ready track. Each loop was over 100', they were fed in one spot, with surplus phone wire...........but all the rail joints were soldered.
EZ Track? rail joint every 9", sure there is lots of voltage drop......
Going a bit further on the silver solder theme:
From Oppi Untracht's "Metal Techniques for Craftsmen", "Silver solder is a term used to classify solders in which a major ingredient is silver." The term "silver-bearing" should apply only to solders have only a small amount of silver.
The practical difference is that silver-bearing solders can be used with a soldering iron. You need a torch to work with solver solder, as the common kinds flow at 1325F for "easy", 1390F for "medium" and 1475F for "hard".
Since we have been discussing alloys (brass and nickel silver), the alloy ratio of these solders might be interesting:
easy: 60% silver, 25% copper, 15% zinc
medium: 70% silver, 20% copper, 10% zinc
hard: 76% silver, 22% copper, 3% zinc
Edward Sutorik
doctorwaynend while handlaying will solve the issue of the too-wide ties, are you planning to use tie plates and at least four spikes in every tie? For most of us, model railroading is full of compromises
Union Pacific Standardspiking patterns
https://www.up.com/cs/groups/public/@uprr/@customers/@industrialdevelopment/@operationsspecs/@specifications/documents/up_pdf_nativedocs/pdf_up_std_0453.pdf
I tried to sell my two cents worth, but no one would give me a plug nickel for it.
I don't have a leg to stand on.
Good idea Mel. I like your fan and filter.
Early on this thread I was going to do a funny and suggest that we create cleanrooms for our train rooms. Comparable to the computer clean rooms of Control Data from the 70s and 80s. We could walk through the transition entryway in our little white suits and gas masks to run our trains. Lol.
I guess it wasn't as funny as I thought.
BMMECNYC SeeYou190 Why are we still dealing with 1978 technology in trackage? Why are some people still using 1950s technology to power their trains?
SeeYou190 Why are we still dealing with 1978 technology in trackage?
doctorwayne Well, I can only speak for my own experience, but DC offers everything I require: I'm a solo operator, I don't like or want sound (or lighting effects, either), and I regularly run double headers, pushers, etc. using a tethered walkaround type of throttle. If the tether bothered me (it doesn't), I'd get wireless throttles like those used by Sheldon.
I was pointing out that for most people, nickel-silver rail is good enough. Which is why no-one has bothered to develop anything else.
doctorwayne And while handlaying will solve the issue of the too-wide ties, are you planning to use tie plates and at least four spikes in every tie?
To start 4 spikes every 4th tie. I will go back and slide in these:
http://www.proto87.com/product1904.html
Normally I would just use ME or Atlas code 83 flex track, but I have a bunch of left over atlas code 100 (several hundred feet I would guess) from previous personal layout and former club modules.
A lot of it has a bunch of ballast and liquid nails stuck to the ties. I decided that it would be less time consuming to handlay it. I am using Peco code 100 turnouts (all recycled).
ATLANTIC CENTRAL I'm not speaking directly for Wayne, but yes you can feed 200' of track from one feeder and run DC just fine. As a confirmed DC operator, using 1980's radio throttle technology, I solder all my rail joints within each electrical section, or "block". Rail joints are the big voltage drop problem, not the rail itself.
Nickel silver has a resistance 19 times higher than copper. And Code 83 has 64% of the cross section of #12 wire. So the resistance of a length of Code 83 will be 30 times that of the same length of #12 copper wire.
30 times the resistance!
Neither had I until I attended a Free-mo setup a couple of weeks ago where the temperature hit 114F.
On one of my 6' long modules, 22 degrees with soldered rail joints, the Shinohara Code 83 popped out sideways in a kink with a depth of about 1/8" and a length of about 3".
No one else had a problem. I suspect mine happened because there was no ballast.
Did happen, though.
7j43k ATLANTIC CENTRAL I'm not speaking directly for Wayne, but yes you can feed 200' of track from one feeder and run DC just fine. As a confirmed DC operator, using 1980's radio throttle technology, I solder all my rail joints within each electrical section, or "block". Rail joints are the big voltage drop problem, not the rail itself. Nickel silver has a resistance 19 times higher than copper. And Code 83 has 40% of the cross section of #12 wire. So the resistance of a length of Code 83 will be 47 times that of the same length of #12 copper wire. 47 times the resistance! No I have never had expansion or contraction issues.......every layout I have ever built had soldered rail joints. Neither had I until I attended a Free-mo setup a couple of weeks ago where the temperature hit 114F. On one of my 6' long modules, 22 degrees with soldered rail joints, the Shinohara Code 83 popped out sideways in a kink with a depth of about 1/8" and a length of about 3". No one else had a problem. I suspect mine happened because there was no ballast. Did happen, though. Ed
Nickel silver has a resistance 19 times higher than copper. And Code 83 has 40% of the cross section of #12 wire. So the resistance of a length of Code 83 will be 47 times that of the same length of #12 copper wire.
47 times the resistance!
Well Ed, we don't have loads that require #12 wire.....
And my layout does not get carted around to different places.....
Feeding even three locos with code 83 rail is like feeding a 15 amp outlet with #10 wire....
I use 13.8 volt regulated power supplies with Aristo Train Engineer throttles. My actual output voltage at the Aristo is about 13.6, and I have never read less than 13.5 anywhere on the layout......
The Aristo uses full voltage pulse widith modulation motor control......
Most of my diesels are three and four unit powered lashups, most steam trains are double headed.
My power supplies are 4 amps. Each throttle has its own independent power supply. There is no common rail/ground.
Have built several layouts this way, including wiring a layout for a friend with my same control system.
Works fine.....
Funny, nobody mentioned looks. Nickel silver has a white silvery luster that looks a lot like polished steel. Brass has a yellow luster that doesn't look like steel at all, it looks like brass.
Stainless is too difficult to solder to ever make a popular rail.
Any metal is conductive enough to make a decent track. You cannot rely on rail joiners to conduct electricity from one track piece to another. Over time the rail joiner corrodes internally, where you cannot inspect it or clean it. To provide steady juice you have to run a power bus made of good thick copper wire (I use #14 solid copper house wire) and then run feeders up from the bus to every other piece of track. It is unlikely that the rail joiners on both ends of the piece of track will both open up, odds are one rail joiner will remain conductive. So a piece of track without its own feeder will stay energized, from one end or the other. Anyhow, the copper power bus carries the juice around the layout rather than the rails. An individual three foot rail only has to carry the juice for three feet, and any metal is conductive enough to do that.
Some train set used to come with aluminum rail. Never looked right and you cannot solder to it. We could use rail made of mild steel, it would look right. But it's harder to solder, harder to bend to shape, and it rusts. Silver would make nice rail, solders readily, looks about right. Dunno how it would compare to nickel silver.
David Starr www.newsnorthwoods.blogspot.com
ATLANTIC CENTRAL Well Ed, we don't have loads that require #12 wire..... Sheldon
No body does. The reason for using house wire, #12 or #14 is that it is mechanically rugged. It won't break just cause someone working under the layout bumps into it. You don't have to worry about a nick from the wire stripper weakening the stuff. You can strip short sections to wrap a feeder around the bus wire and solder it and it will stay. And the stuff is easy to come by. Home Despot or Lowes carries it, you can often get used wire pulled out during a home remodeling job for the asking.
ATLANTIC CENTRAL I use 13.8 volt regulated power supplies with Aristo Train Engineer throttles. My actual output voltage at the Aristo is about 13.6, and I have never read less than 13.5 anywhere on the layout......
That 13.5 reading is only valid if there was a train running at that location at the same time.
And I picked #12 because so many people use #14, #12, or #10 for their power bus. As opposed to #18, say.
7j43kNickel silver has a resistance 19 times higher than copper. And Code 83 has 40% of the cross section of #12 wire. So the resistance of a length of Code 83 will be 47 times that of the same length of #12 copper wire. 47 times the resistance!
Code 83 rail resistance=.6 ohms (including resistance of multivolt meter leads).
how does this compare to the thin gauge wires connecting the track to the decoder and the decoder to the motor?
i'll guess that the decoder wire gauge is #28, 0.213 ohms/m = 0.0054 ohms/inch. At lease one estimate for nickle silver rail is 0.0014 ohm/inch.
at 1Amp, NS track will drop 0.005V/in and the decoder wire 0.0015V/in. Consider the lengths of decoder wire and the lengths of track between the loco and the nearest feed.
greg - Philadelphia & Reading / Reading
Wow, Over 50 responses in one day!
I did not expect that kind of activity when I made this post this morning. Thank you for all of the information. There is a lot of good stuff in this thread.
Living the dream.
BMMECNYC 7j43k Nickel silver has a resistance 19 times higher than copper. And Code 83 has 40% of the cross section of #12 wire. So the resistance of a length of Code 83 will be 30 times that of the same length of #12 copper wire. 30 times the resistance! Code 83 rail resistance=.6 ohms (including resistance of multivolt meter leads).
7j43k Nickel silver has a resistance 19 times higher than copper. And Code 83 has 40% of the cross section of #12 wire. So the resistance of a length of Code 83 will be 30 times that of the same length of #12 copper wire. 30 times the resistance!
That would be for a 3' piece. I get .174 ohm per 3'. Which is sorta close.
And #12 copper is 1.93 ohms for 1000 feet.
dstarr Stainless is too difficult to solder to ever make a popular rail. Any metal is conductive enough to make a decent track. You cannot rely on rail joiners to conduct electricity from one track piece to another. Over time the rail joiner corrodes internally, where you cannot inspect it or clean it.
Any metal is conductive enough to make a decent track. You cannot rely on rail joiners to conduct electricity from one track piece to another. Over time the rail joiner corrodes internally, where you cannot inspect it or clean it.
I agree with these two statements 100%.
We're kind of in a hypothetical Dreamland thinking a manufacturer of track would come up with a stainless rail anyway. M E can't even offer another Choice from a number 6 turnout, let's face the facts.
If a company did introduce stainless steel rail and also offered stainless steel track connectors with wire feeds, they might have something there.
The rails could be cut with a Dremel industrial diamond wheel
RR_Mel I don’t know about anybody else but a ±¼ volt difference doesn’t make any difference with any of my locomotives. If someone has a problem with a ½ volt drop there is a problem somewhere else. I use #20 solid wire homeruns to all of my blocks (some as long as 10’) and I’ve never had a voltage problem running dual one amp locomotives with sound and full passenger car lighting. I use both Atlas Nickel Silver code 83 and code 100 flex track on my current layout with unsoldered Walthers joiners, I have never had any electrical problems with any of my track or wiring in close to 30 years. Mel Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951 My Model Railroad http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/ Bakersfield, California I'm beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.
That's reassuring and good to know.
I plan on not soldering my rail joiners and using wire feed joiners every other Flex track.
I also plan on using No Ox ID applied with a toothpick on every Joiner as a precautionary measure.
gregc 7j43k Nickel silver has a resistance 19 times higher than copper. And Code 83 has 64% of the cross section of #12 wire. So the resistance of a length of Code 83 will be 30.3 times that of the same length of #12 copper wire. 30.3 times the resistance! how does this compare to the thin gauge wires connecting the track to the decoder and the decoder to the motor? i'll guess that the decoder wire gauge is #28, 0.213 ohms/m = 0.0054 ohms/inch. At lease one estimate for nickle silver rail is 0.0014 ohm/inch. at 1Amp, NS track will drop 0.005V/in and the decoder wire 0.0015V/in. Consider the lengths of decoder wire and the lengths of track between the loco and the nearest feed.
7j43k Nickel silver has a resistance 19 times higher than copper. And Code 83 has 64% of the cross section of #12 wire. So the resistance of a length of Code 83 will be 30.3 times that of the same length of #12 copper wire. 30.3 times the resistance!
30.3 times the resistance!
I get Code 83 nickel silver rail being .0048 ohms/inch. I believe the .0014 is incorrect. My information comes from the Chemical Rubber Handbook and the National Electrical Code. The only self generated number is the cross-sectional area of Code 83 rail. Since the cross-section is a complex shape, I chose to multiply the width of the head times the height of the rail (Shinohara/Walthers), as it is a close approximation.
Double darn. I went back and checked my numbers again. I made an error in the cross-section work. I will go back through my posts above and correct it.
Since I did make a mistake, I feel that I should show my calculations for inspection below:
From Chem Rubber Handbook--Resistivity of copper: 1.7 microhm-cm. Resistivity of nickel silver: 33 microhm-cm.
33/1.7= 19.4 Thus nickel silver is 19.4 times the resistance of copper.
As I said, I felt that the cross-sectional area of Code 83 could be represented by multiplying the head width by the height (essentially folding the rail base up under the rail head)
.039" x .083" = .0032 sq in
From NEC: cross-sectional area of #12 solid = .005 sq in
.0032/.005 = 64%
The cross-section of Code 83 rail is 64% of #12 solid.
19.4 / .64 = 30.3 Code 83 rail has 30.3 times the resistance of #12 solid copper wire.
From the NEC: solid copper wire has a resistance of .00193 ohm per foot
Thus Code 83 has 30.3 x .00193 = .058 ohm per foot
Code 83 rail has .0048 ohm per inch
Code 83 rail has .174 ohm per 36"
STILL LATER:
I'm still bothered by both Greg (earlier) and Mel (later) coming up with a resistance of approximately .0015 ohm per inch, while I get .0048--approximately 3 times higher. On consideration, I believe that the alloy used in nickel silver rail has less nickel than the alloy I was using for my calculations*. Less nickel means more copper and/or zinc, both of which are much more conductive than nickel.
* copper 60%, zinc 25%, nickel 14%
7j43k BMMECNYC 7j43k Nickel silver has a resistance 19 times higher than copper. And Code 83 has 40% of the cross section of #12 wire. So the resistance of a length of Code 83 will be 47 times that of the same length of #12 copper wire. 47 times the resistance! Code 83 rail resistance=.6 ohms (including resistance of multivolt meter leads). That would be for a 3' piece. I get .27 ohm per 3'. Which is pretty close. And #12 copper is 1.93 ohms for 1000 feet. Ed
BMMECNYC 7j43k Nickel silver has a resistance 19 times higher than copper. And Code 83 has 40% of the cross section of #12 wire. So the resistance of a length of Code 83 will be 47 times that of the same length of #12 copper wire. 47 times the resistance! Code 83 rail resistance=.6 ohms (including resistance of multivolt meter leads).
7j43k Nickel silver has a resistance 19 times higher than copper. And Code 83 has 40% of the cross section of #12 wire. So the resistance of a length of Code 83 will be 47 times that of the same length of #12 copper wire. 47 times the resistance!
That would be for a 3' piece. I get .27 ohm per 3'. Which is pretty close.
Yes, it was a 3' piece (or as near 3' as I could get). .016 ohms per inch.
7j43k Double darn. I went back and checked my numbers again. I made an error in the cross-section work. I will go back through my posts above and correct it. Ed
That's okay Ed as Billy Joel says "we're only human, we're supposed to make mistakes".
From past experience I can tell you though. When I get a little too cocky it occasionally does bite me in the derriere. Ha ha.
7j43k ATLANTIC CENTRAL I use 13.8 volt regulated power supplies with Aristo Train Engineer throttles. My actual output voltage at the Aristo is about 13.6, and I have never read less than 13.5 anywhere on the layout...... That 13.5 reading is only valid if there was a train running at that location at the same time. And I picked #12 because so many people use #14, #12, or #10 for their power bus. As opposed to #18, say. Ed
Yes, that is the voltage with a load.
And, I do have a power bus because of my Advanced Cab Control system, and it is #12 wire. But the local feeders from the relay boards to the track are much smaller, #18.
Power runs from the four mainline throttles around the layout to a relay board for each mainline track section (think ever other signal block). Those relay boards are locally mounted and the feeders run through inductive detectors befor going to the track.
Signal blocks such as interlockings are slaved to the ajoining blocks and automaticly power routed by turnout position.
Other trackage areas (yards, industrial areas) have their own throttles and power supplies as well as being able to be connected to mainline throttles.
The dispatcher aligns routes and assigns cabs to blocks, or it can be done locally as you walk with your train at local tower panels.
dstarr ATLANTIC CENTRAL Well Ed, we don't have loads that require #12 wire..... Sheldon No body does. The reason for using house wire, #12 or #14 is that it is mechanically rugged. It won't break just cause someone working under the layout bumps into it. You don't have to worry about a nick from the wire stripper weakening the stuff. You can strip short sections to wrap a feeder around the bus wire and solder it and it will stay. And the stuff is easy to come by. Home Despot or Lowes carries it, you can often get used wire pulled out during a home remodeling job for the asking.
Well, I don't use DCC, and don't have "that kind" of power bus, but I do have a power bus for each throttle. But I would never use ROMEX or other building wire for this sort of wiring.
I use neatly cabled and supported stranded wire and don't have open splices with wires willy nilly under the layout........My resume includes Electrician, Electrical Control System Designer, Electrical Design Draftsman.......
ROBERT PETRICKAs for using actual silver in the rails . . . it is not as ridiculous as it sounds,
Pikers Go gold or Go Home.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
BMMECNYC rrinker It's not that DCC is more finicky, it's that the voltage on the rails in DC directly controls the speed, so if there is a slow and gradual voltage drop, you don't see it and/or automatically compensate by turning the speed control up a bit. I ran an 8x12 double track layout with DCC on one pair of feeders as well, no problems. Hooking up all the rest of the feeder drops didn't change things, either. There's nothing more finickey about DCC, as long as the voltage remains above the specified minimum there should not be any control issue - and it takes a LOT of nickle silver rail and/or a huge load of powered equipment to cause the voltage to drop from the nominal output at the main booster to a level below the NMRA specifications. At the same time, I had a basic 4x8 oval of Bachmann EZ Track running on DC and the locos noticeably slowed at the furthest point from the power pack. I had to add extra feeders to fix this. Being sectional track, thre were more joints in this 4x8 oval then there were in the 8x12. This is the real cause of issues over long track runs with few feeders. That 8x12 also ran in a basement with open ceiling joists and unfinished poured concrete walls and floor. Outside of cleanup after painting the rails, I didn't clean the track on that one, either. Just a light brushing to remove loose dust on occasion. No liquids, no abrasives. I still contend that anything that STAYS wet on the rails only makes it worse. --Randy Did a quarter trip the DCC circuit breaker prior to adding additional feeders?
Yes, it did. Most of my joints were soldered. Only turnouts were not soldered in place.
One thing you have to remember (and check) is that many of these wiring sites that list x voltage drop for a given size wire are assuming the full 5 amps of you power supply is being delivered to the spot at some distance from the source. That's all well and good if you are running a multi-motor large scale beast, or have 10 parallel tracks all loaded with locos pulling from the same power bus. With the exception of that P2K mistake E unit with the high current motor, the days of HO locos drawing huge currents are long over. Even the gold Athearn Blue Box motors don't draw a full amp in normal operation. The free running current, even with a decent train, of most locos is well below their stall current. Even going extreme and saying 1/2 amp per loco (considering I was able to have 12 locos going at once with my Zephyr, which is rated at 2.5 amps, 1/2 amp per loco is even high), that's 1/10 the 5 amp output of the typical booster. So if the calculated voltage drop is even 5 volts at 5 amps, that's only 1/2 a volt at 1/2 amp.
What a given size wire can handle in house wiring is completely meaningless for the purposes of model railroading. Sure, #12 wire is used on 20 amp circuits. But at what voltage? Household circuits in the US are 120V RMS. That's nearly 170 volts peak. So say there is a loss in the run of 10 volts. Now you have 160 volts peak. Which is still 113V RMS. Not such a big deal after all. Which is why it works. #12 can handle a 20 amp load without heating up so much that it melts the insulation or sets your house on fire. But if we wire up something on the model railroad that starts with a nominal 15 volts, typical DCC voltage for HO, and introduce a wiring length and size that results in a 10 volt drop - now we only have 5 volts left, of COURSE that will be noticeable. The DROP is the same - Ohm's Law, E=IR, the only factors in the number of volts dropped int he wire are the resistence per length, the total length, and the current drawn. So draw 20 amps over 100 foot of wire and the total voltage loss will be the same regardless if you started with 120 volts or 15 volts. Now it's generally bad form to feed the full 5 amps to one section of track, and if there were such a thing as a 20 amp booster, it would be even MORE bad to just connect that directly to the rails. OK, so we now reduced out drop to 1/4 of what is was, so instead of losing 10 volts, now it's 2.5 volts. Still noticeable. But wait, our loco doesn't draw 5 amps, it draws .5 amps, 1/10 of that. So now our REAL drop is .25 volts. Not noticeable.
It isn's just the benchwork that a lot of people overbuild... ANd given that all the popular DCC systems allow for distributing the boosters around a large layout to keep the bus wire lengths down - there is little need for huge wire sizes. That does not mean using telephone wire for the bus - though if you only ever run one loco at a time I'll bet it would work fine, but neither do you need massive #10 wire. I only use #12 because when I last bought wire, the #12 was effectively the sme price as #14, so why not? Given that bus runs will be short, if there is a significant difference in cost I will certainly use #14 as bus runs will be kept minimalized with distributed boosters. And distributed block detection with current transformers - no centralized diode drop detectors with wires running out inder the layout for each block.
RR_Mel Because my Fluke only reads out to down to 1/10 of a ohm I used one Atlas code 83 rail as a go by and made some measurements. I adjusted the voltage until It was drawing 1 amp across a single rail, the voltage measured .610 volts. Voltage .610 V ÷ Current 1 Amp = Resistance 0.610 Ω for 36 inches of code 83 Nickel silver rail. Mel Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951 My Model Railroad http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/ Bakersfield, California I'm beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.
Hey good idea, two of my Flukes do nanosiemens. Problem is, when getting into small units, the resistence of the probe wires becomes a significant factor. I do have one meter with 4 wire measurement so it can cancel out the loss in the probes. I should try that. Maybe compare Atlas 83 to peco 83. And even better - 2 sections, one set with the joiners just slid on and one set with the joints soldered.
Edit: that seems way high, actually. That would be 1.2 ohms per 3 foot section of track (if one rail is .6 ohms). At 1 amp, that's 1.2 volts lost in the track. With 6 sections of flex (assuming soldered joints), just 18 feet worth of track, you'd have 7.2 volts drop. Not possible it's that high., trains would never run. I doubt my program track would work (2 lengths of flex track with the wires soldered at one end). Even my test track which is made up of pieces of sectional track (joints soldered) is nearly 3 feet long and I cna program a decoder no matter where I put it on that track, near where the feed wires attach, or all the way down at the other end. I'd say the numbers are at LEAST 10x too high.
rrinker Edit: that seems way high, actually. That would be 1.2 ohms per 3 foot section of track (if one rail is .6 ohms). At 1 amp, that's 1.2 volts lost in the track. With 6 sections of flex (assuming soldered joints), just 18 feet worth of track, you'd have 7.2 volts drop. Not possible it's that high., trains would never run. I doubt my program track would work (2 lengths of flex track with the wires soldered at one end). Even my test track which is made up of pieces of sectional track (joints soldered) is nearly 3 feet long and I cna program a decoder no matter where I put it on that track, near where the feed wires attach, or all the way down at the other end. I'd say the numbers are at LEAST 10x too high. --Randy
Sir Madog Aluminum alloy track is already available for garden railways, but aluminum also corrodes, even disintegrates, has a bad conductivity and cannot be soldered.
I worked in the aluminum industry for 35 years and I would say that your statement has a few mistakes in it.
Yes, certain alloys of aluminum will corrode. But there are a lot that do not. Corrugated aluminum roofing and siding has no coating on it and last for 50 years or more. It is not used as much because there are cheaper alternatives.
Aluminums conductivity is #4 on most list, just behind gold. It has many uses in the electrical industry. It is used as the sevice entrance cable on most buildings. It is used for high voltage transmission including the cables on the huge towers that run from power plants to the substations. The 4000V feeders that supply the transformer in front of my house are aluminim. At one time it was used for house wiring. But, because of it's lack of 'springiness' the connections on recepticles would loosen over time and could cause a fire.
And, yes aluminum can be soldered.
7j43kWayne, Are you saying that there is only one supply point on the track to supply 200'? And are you saying that you have run more than a dozen locomotives AT ONCE? Ed
Yes, although the dozen locos operation was usually for my grandkids: I'd start with one loco, and they'd begin to follow it around the room. As it moved around the layout, I'd add another behind it, and continue doing so until I ran out of locomotives. During this game, some would catch up with others, and I'd then begin removing locos as they came by, until only one was left, and we'd park it and end the "operating session".
I do, however, run most trains with multiple locomotives, due to the ever-present 2.5% grades. That has included trains in excess of 70 cars and others with trailing weights in excess of 22lbs...these were usually test trains for locomotive capabilities, track and equipment reliability, and train handling.All rail joints are soldered, and I then cut gaps where necessary to allow sections of the mainline or passing sidings to be isolated by use of toggle switches on the layout fascia. Since I'm the only operator, this allows me to run multiple trains sequentially (one at a time), although I've not fully developed an operating scheme.Currently, most trains "work" each of the towns through which they pass, and an operating session might include only a single town, with the trip to be continued next time. That next session might include a through train passing in either direction before the original train resumes its journey.
I never bothered to get into the minutiae of electrical theory, so the layout is common rail pretty-much right out of the Atlas book. The wiring is very basic and easy for me to understand, and it works, which is all I require of it. Power is supplied by an MRC ControlMaster 20, with train control through a 3 amp PWM throttle from Stapleton Electronics.
With all the measuring of ohms and voltage drop of a section of rail, how do you know what the alloy is? The ratios between the copper, nickel, and zinc could be all over the place. With todays high copper prices there might be less of it per foot than just a few years ago. And if the rail was made in china, who knows what the quality is.
Bottom line is nickel silver is still used because it is the cheapest to manufacture. It always comes down to profit margins.
A lot of paralysis by analysis going on here.
The question should be why don't we have a better, less expensive option to choose from?
maxman SeeYou190 Why do we not have a better, and more expensive, option to choose from? A lot of paralysis by analysis going on here. The question should be why don't we have a better, less expensive option to choose from?
SeeYou190 Why do we not have a better, and more expensive, option to choose from?
It's a compromize. Maybe it's because nickel silver is actually the best material: considering manufacturing concerns, durability, corroson resistance, conductivity and cost.
I'm hopeful that "deadrail" will be the ultimate solution to track material in a few years. That way, we can use whatever we want and never clean track for electrical purposes again. Battery tech has a way to go, however, before some of this is realistically done in the smaller scales.
Greg Shindledecker Modeling the =WM= Thomas Sub in the mid-70s
SouthPenn With all the measuring of ohms and voltage drop of a section of rail, how do you know what the alloy is? The ratios between the copper, nickel, and zinc could be all over the place. With todays high copper prices there might be less of it per foot than just a few years ago. And if the rail was made in china, who knows what the quality is. Bottom line is nickel silver is still used because it is the cheapest to manufacture. It always comes down to profit margins.
I speculated on the alloy content in an ealier post. It would appear that rail's nickel content is lower than what appears to be the common alloy ratio I used. I suspect nickel costs more than copper. On the other hand, it might be as simple as choosing an alloy that does the paticular job better; and that alloy has less nickel. And MORE copper.
Anyway, whichever alloy ratio is used, resistance of nickel silver is dramatically higher than brass or copper. But there are people here who argue it is still not high enough to be a problem. AND. If you DO feel it is, it has been spread around for years that you should have multiple taps and copper feeder distribution to solve the problem--a route I took.
Either way, the resistance of nickel silver rail is only a problem if the modeler makes it one.
This has been a fun and interesting thread.
I do think Mike sumed things up early on in his statements.
There are two factors that contribute to having to clean your track. Don't confuse the two I believe is what he basically said.
Corrosion/Air Contaminants
I do not think nickel silver corrodes quickly enough to be the root of the track cleaning problem.
Even if you had pure sterling silver for a rail. Look at an old teapot or coin that is silver and has a brownish black tarnish all over it.
Definitely keeps Tarn-X in business.
You can somewhat minimize one aspect of the equation with a quality alloy. I do believe they achieved this in the 70s with nickel silver rail.
Air contaminants will always be there but also can be somewhat reduced.
This must be the main factor that determines how often you have to clean your track.
Back to Black gunk again. Lol
Edit. That kind of raised a question in my head.
Is the brownish black tarnish on Silver corrosion, black Gunk, or both?
And hats off to the bear that one is his!
gshin I'm hopeful that "deadrail" will be the ultimate solution to track material in a few years. That way, we can use whatever we want and never clean track for electrical purposes again. Battery tech has a way to go, however, before some of this is realistically done in the smaller scales.
Except for signaling systems where you need detection circuits. And then there's the issue of charging/changing the batteries. And that's assuming you can get batteries small enough and strong enough, otherwise you have one or more dedicated boxcars, baggage cars, etc. behind the locomotive.
All that said, you can still do it now. You just may need to make a few compromises.
WHy don;t we have a better, cheaper alternative? Because model railroading is such a small niche that ther is no profit in R&D for that sort of thing. I doubt there is a huge profit margin ont eh track now, if it were that much cheaper to make soemthign different, it's unlikely the end user would see much of any price decrease. But finding a cheaper allow with a better set of compromises (no matter what you pick, there will always be compromises - be it electrical conductivity, bendability, or easy of manufacturing) means paying someone to test this stuff out, and I just don't see that happening. You aren't going to get people to rip up their layouts and replace all the track - after all these years of nickel silver, there are still people using brass. Any R&D money in model railroading is most certainly going to higher profit margin parts of the business.
Track fiddler Edit. That kind of raised a question in my head. Is the brownish black tarnish on Silver corrosion, black Gunk, or both?
Tarnish on sterling silver is oxidation and/or sulfidation of the copper (7.5%) that is in it.
Pure silver is also somewhat reactive, though nowhere near copper. As noted, though, it's a fantastic electrical condutor. Perhaps the ideal material for model railroad rail would be platinum, which is essentially non-reactive. Of course, the rail would still get dirty and need cleaning. Oh darn.
Of course, some of you nay-sayers are tempted to reject platinum, thinking it is too soft. But pure platinum has the same hardness as sterling silver. So consider spending the extra few dollars for the clearly superior rail: Code 83 Platinum!
7j43k So consider spending the extra few dollars for the clearly superior rail: Code 83 Platinum! Ed
So consider spending the extra few dollars for the clearly superior rail: Code 83 Platinum!
That's a good one Ed.
They could sell it at the Goodman Jewelers track Supply.
One could take out special financing for thier track plan. And no ring for the wife. Lol
One other thing about Code 83 Platinum: the electrical resistance is about the same as nickel silver (nowhere near real silver).
So, if you feel the need for multiple rail feeds for nickel silver rail, the same will hold true for Code 83 Platinum.
For most of us, that's not a deal-breaker.
Oh, yeah. It takes soft solder nicely, making it superior to difficult metals like aluminum and stainless.
For those of you on a budget, I would suggest first using Code 83 Platinum in hard to reach areas, like tunnels.
Track fiddler 7j43k So consider spending the extra few dollars for the clearly superior rail: Code 83 Platinum! Ed That's a good one Ed. They could sell it at the Goodman Jewelers track Supply. One could take out special financing for thier track plan. And no ring for the wife. Lol
My eldest Son (47) is a Metallurgist who for the past 20yrs. is a buyer and seller of precious metals. Not too long ago.....like the past 5yrs. Platinum was worth more than Gold, by a fairly large margin. Believe it or not, where He got most of it from was Automotive catalytic converters which He bought in lots of thousands of pounds...had the Platinum extracted and resold it for a pretty hefty profit as is all the precious metals He handles. The interesting part is...He never touches any of it......just buys and sells it.
Another interesting note: Is the fact that His wife and Him can't have Children, but they wanted them so they adopted new born babies. They have 4 adopted children, 1 girl and 3 boys which are in their teens now. A new born adopted baby from an Orphange is roughly 28,000 dollars with a long waiting list and You are totally screened for a year prior to even getting on any prospective parent list.
Just thought I would throw that in...for everyone saying there has to be a cheaper better way for toy track........a better way.....bio clean room, with no outside oxygen. Mike said it in the beginning.........
Take Care!
Frank
That's why there is a brisk business in stealing catalytic converters from cars - the platinum and palladium found within are worth a significant amount of money.
Huh. Can some one please explain to me why Platinum is needed and what its purpose is for in a catalytic converter.
I wonder if Rod Stewart used Ed's code 83 Platinum rail on his magnificent layout.
If he did I guarantee you he didn't get the materials from catalytic converters.
Track fiddler Huh. Can some one please explain to me why Platinum is needed and what its purpose is for in a catalytic converter.
Platinum is used in a chemical reaction to convert the nastier bits of a car's exhaust into less nastier stuff. You ever notice car exhaust doesn't smell as bad as it used to and makes you less dizzy? That's because the platinum is converting the carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide. Still stuff you don't want to breathe, but you won't die as fast?
They start marketing platinum track to those who can afford it, burglars all over the country will be casing model railroads -- and ripping up the track whether or not it's platinum.
Good grief, Charlie Brown
Huh. Thanks for clarifying that one for me NittanyLion.
I suppose driving on the highways and breathing that air everyday is a little worse than all the fuss about secondhand smoke. Things that make you go hmmm.
I think I better re-rail this thread back to subject before we all get in trouble.
I think more importantly than changing the alloy that track rails are made of. The greatest thing the model railroad track manufacturers could do is give us 8 foot length rails we could thread the 30 to 36 inch plastic ties so we have less joints on our curves.
That would be a good thing.
Track fiddler The greatest thing the model railroad track manufacturers could do is give us 8 foot length rails we could thread the 30 to 36 inch plastic ties so we have less joints on our curves. That would be a good thing.
The greatest thing the model railroad track manufacturers could do is give us 8 foot length rails we could thread the 30 to 36 inch plastic ties so we have less joints on our curves.
MicroEngineering will sell you 6' lengths of rail.
Disclaimer: This post may contain humor, sarcasm, and/or flatulence.
Michael Mornard
Bringing the North Woods to South Dakota!
And there you go!
I soldered code 83 rail into 12' and 15' lengths for using it with Central Valley tie strips. To accommodated the rail joiners, I used a cut-off disc in a motor tool to alter the base at each end of each 3' section of rail, making the base both thinner and narrower, then used code 55 rail joiners. Obviously, the rail joints are still there, but they're not all that obvious, even when you're looking for them. The rail was affixed to the tie strips using contact cement.
Have to say, I enjoy the clickety clack of steel wheels going over rail joints. Of course my layout is set in the '50s, when welded rail was minimal.
Good information to be had on this thread !
ENJOY !
Mobilman44
Living in southeast Texas, formerly modeling the "postwar" Santa Fe and Illinois Central
Bayfield Transfer Railway MicroEngineering will sell you 6' lengths of rail.
M E sure likes thier 6's. I laid my cork for 5 and 7 turnouts. Although I have heard of people mixing Atlas with M E. I'm not sure how that will look.
mlehman They start marketing platinum track to those who can afford it, burglars all over the country will be casing model railroads -- and ripping up the track whether or not it's platinum. Good grief, Charlie Brown
They start making Platinum track I'm going to go get a job there.
I'll be like Johnny Cash with my big lunch box.
And I'll build it one piece at a time and it won't cost me a dime you'll know it's me when my train comes through the town.
Good news is, unless you're trying to get a full size loco from GE, you won't even need a buddy with a mobile home.
rrinker Good news is, unless you're trying to get a full size loco from GE, you won't even need a buddy with a mobile home. --Randy
Lol. Right.
How would any of the materials mentioned in this thread be better than nickel silver?
People have declared that nickel silver rail corrodes.
Platinum does not corrode.
7j43k People have declared that nickel silver rail corrodes. Platinum does not corrode. Ed
Ed,
As mentioned before - and in just about any application - it depends primarily on how well you take care of it. (FYI: Even stainless steel can corrode under the right circumstances and conditions.) Polish/burnish and minimize the amount of abrasion to the surface of NS rail and it should serve you well for years. Exotic metals is a waste of money...
I have brass track that is older than me, often stored in an uncontrolled space. It's badly tarnished, but not corroded. A good cleaning and it would probably be usable (some of it is actually fiber tie flex, amazing it isn;t curled up, but still probably out of gauge).
The oldest nickel silver track I have is probably 20 years old. Also not corroded.
It's not so much a corrosion issue (unless you are building an outdoor layout at a beachfront house by the ocean) as it is an oxidation issues. Most metals react with oxygen. The oxides formed by many are non-conductive - the only way to stop this is to seal up your layout room and fill it with pure nitrogen, but that may make operations difficult. Other metal oxides remain conductive, if at a lower level than the base metal. Such is the case with nickel silver.
Randy,
Corrosion is the result of an oxidation process, in which metals react with oxygen, ending in the turning of metals into various oxides, which we commonly call rust.
Order rail in 1/4 mile long strips or make it that long like prototype railroads do.
In my area, the Pan Am railway has had 1/4 mile, 136 lb, ribbon rail put down for a new Amtrak routing.
They used new ties with Pandrol clips and the upgrade was quite fast. no more spikes.
New turnouts were assembled nearby before the rail was put down.
Quite something to see a long string of flatcars with layers of 1/4 mile ribbon rail.
A lot less clacking. I ride a bicycle on the road near the mainline and sometimes carry bike accros the rails until the new tunnel is finished in Octtober. Rail trail on both sides of the main.
Rich
If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.
mobilman44Have to say, I enjoy the clickety clack of steel wheels going over rail joints. Of course my layout is set in the '50s, when welded rail was minimal....
You could use a razor saw to make shallow cuts in the railhead every 39'. This would give a real prototypical clickety-clack.
Track fiddler...They start making Platinum track I'm going to go get a job there....
A big lunchbox is one thing, but one that's three feet long might raise a few eyebrows - unless, I suppose, you take subs for lunch everyday.
I remember my Dad talking about a guy with whom he worked, supposedly rather "light fingered". Somebody had bet him that he couldn't swipe an especially large bench vise.Apparently, he came to work one day wearing a long overcoat (luckily, it was in the winter). When he left work that afternoon, the vise was between his legs, suspended on a very sturdy rope that he had wrapped around his neck and shoulders. As soon as the guy was out of sight of the guard, the vise was ditched.There were incidents at the steel plant where I worked where contractors would leave the plant with either company or other contractors' equipment. This included office trailers, and heavy equipment, like front-end loaders and backhoes. Why bother building it from pieces when you can get it r-t-r?
RR_Mel....When I was piddling with G gauge in my garden railroad I did have a problem with the G gauge brass rails. When ants got crushed on the rails if left on the rails their remains would eat the brass. I had to run a heavy scrubber car in every train. I tried some Green stuff to prevent the ants from using the rails as freeways but watering would do that in. I ran a Centerline car with the roller soaked with the Green stuff and that helped but ants were still a big problem for the brass rails.
The problem was caused by the formic acid in the ants' bodies.
Platinum eh why not titanium if its good enough to hold my spine together its good enough for rail.
Joe Staten Island West
hi all here is my 2 cents ( not that it's worth much as I like selector am the farthest from an electrical engineer or metalurgist as well )
How about we do away with the whole issue by not using the rails to conduct energy. This way you could us any metal to create the rails as the dirt would become less an issue.
What i am saying and I'm sure this will happen eventually.With micro circuts and battery tech getting smaller and better. I can for see even n scale radio control engines controlled by wifi for command control and direction speed etc. With a small abttery pack powering the locomotives themselves. Certainly this will be expensive when it first arrives on the seen but with time and sales the cost per unit would go down. I know that garden rail folks are already douing this,so in time we indoor types may reap their rewards.
TB
Still need some sort of 'area' detection for signalling. The prototype uses the track. Our models have always used the track. So even if the propulsion power doesn't coem through the rails, some power needs to flow there for block detection. Few if any of the schemes that use IR sensors can duplicate the 'car somewhere in a block' detection you get with track current sense methods of detection.
rrinker Few if any of the schemes that use IR sensors can duplicate the 'car somewhere in a block' detection you get with track current sense methods of detection.
None do unless you use the bounce detectors (ones that point up at the bottom of the car) every (insert shortest car length) across the whole railroad.
rrinkerSo even if the propulsion power doesn't come through the rails, some power needs to flow there for block detection.
This makes battery power redunant in my mind, because all the problems it solves, are still problems (=>solves nothing). Kind of like keep alives. I have always said that they are neat, but just a band aid solution to the actual problem (be it broken pick ups, insuficient feeders, dirty track or dirty wheels).
Taking the control circuit off the track is a logical step blutooth, or radio now can fit in a locomotive.
rrinker Most metals react with oxygen.
Most metals react with oxygen.
Platinum does not react with oxygen. Or much of anything else.
The oxides formed by many are non-conductive - the only way to stop this is to seal up your layout room and fill it with pure nitrogen, but that may make operations difficult. Other metal oxides remain conductive, if at a lower level than the base metal. Such is the case with nickel silver. --Randy
The oxides formed by many are non-conductive - the only way to stop this is to seal up your layout room and fill it with pure nitrogen, but that may make operations difficult. Other metal oxides remain conductive, if at a lower level than the base metal. Such is the case with nickel silver.
I should very much like to hear about "metal oxides [that] remain conductive".
Apparently rhenium oxide is as conductive as metallic silver. Who knew? What others have you found?
But here, we're talking about oxides of copper, nickel, and zinc. When I do an online search for oxides of these metals, I find nothing about them being conductors. Nickel oxide, for example, is plainly stated to be non-conductive. Copper and zinc oxides can apparently be semi-conductors at times, but I still found nothing hinting there were conductors.
doctorwayne Track fiddler ...They start making Platinum track I'm going to go get a job there.... Wayne
Track fiddler
...They start making Platinum track I'm going to go get a job there....
A better question is why the heck are people still making steel (not stainless, regular steel) tracks, the very thing nickel silver was to replace as a much less expensive alternative to brass. Unlike nickel silver, steel rusts and can rust very fast if not maintained properly.
Just clean the track more often, look up more efficient or long lasting ways of doing so, it'll save you a lot of trouble.
SETH CRAWFORD Unlike nickel silver, steel rusts and can rust very fast if not maintained properly.
Unlike nickel silver, steel rusts and can rust very fast if not maintained properly.
The easiest way to confirm the regular use of prototype rail is the presence of unrusted steel on the crown. Conversely, though, if one wanted to model rarely used and therefore rusted trackage, is there some sort of STAIN for nickel silver rail that does not impede the transfer of current to wheels and other contacts? Seems as though there are some metals that can be discolored other than with a coat of paint. I wonder if nickel silver is one of them.
John
I'd like to make a point.
Nickel silver was the last Improvement done in the 70's as Kevin stated, OP of this thread.
It was a great Improvement. It oxidizes or corrodes (whatever you want to call it) very slow. As Ulrich basically said rust is rust. My classic car agrees with that one as well as I do.
What I'm getting at I think nickel silver rail is just fine it's not like it's rotting out disintegrating into the plywood on our layouts.
The issue a lot of modelers on this forum have stated is the corrosion, oxidation whatever you want to call it causes lack of continuity in the track connectors joining the rails.
I guess this can make sense especially after you ballast and the water and glue seeps into the track joiners and Festers overtime.
So my point is. Would stainless steel rail and stainless steel track joiners be a better solution.
Bear with me here. It's a no-brainer and everyone knows two pieces of Steel close together where the moisture can not dissipate rusts faster than anywhere else.
That's why the seams that come together around the wheel wells on our cars always rusted out first.
Stainless does not rust. Stainless is more expensive but not extremely more expensive than steel. Especially in the size of our little tinsel tail rails I don't think it would be that expensive.
One more plus I would like to point out about stainless steel. No matter what type of alloy you use for model railroad rail, black gunk will always beckon us.
Nothing likes to stick to stainless steel. We had a stainless a steel counter in our fish cleaning house at my parents Resort. Windows were on all four sides and the sun baked through them.
Some of our guests were pigs and they left their fish guts and slop all over the counters. I would have to go and clean it up the next day after the sun-baked it on.
Guess what, the stuff came off easily I never had a problem with that. Maybe black gunk would too.
Edit I have a lot of stock in stainless steel.
Disclaimer: Just kidding
SeeYou190 OK, we know that nickel silver track still needs to be cleaned, just see all the threads about this. The conductive oxide promise did not formulate well.
SeeYou190 Why do we not have a better, and more expensive, option to choose from? There must be something better to make model rail from. Some sort of stainless steel? Some semi-precious alloy?
Track fiddlerSo my point is. Would stainless steel rail and stainless steel track joiners be a better solution.
No, see above and below.
Track fiddlerEspecially in the size of our little tinsel tail rails I don't think it would be that expensive.
Manufacturers would likely have to re-tool to make Stainless rail. That is going to be added to the cost of your rail. It is harder than N-S. Tooling will wear out faster. Added to the cost of the rail.
Track fiddlerGuess what, the stuff came off easily I never had a problem with that. Maybe black gunk would too.
Have you tried wiping with Isopropyl alcohol? CMX tank car cleaner (albeit expensive) works pretty well (my club uses one on our layout at shows) typically we run it once per day. Track gets dirty at shows very quickly. The black gunk wipes off with a paper towel wetted with Isopropyl alcohol (locomotive wheels must be cleaned as well).
Just dont let the cleaning car sit still with the drip running.....causes um.. ballast "issues".
Lol. Chuckle Chuckles.
Did someone get up on the wrong side of the couch this morning?
Life's a little short, I'm going to go back with Ed's code 83 Platinum.
Seems to be a safer Zone.
Edit. Don't sweat the small stuff.
Track fidler
Stainless steel has been popular with the garden railroad crowd. I have about 20% of my outdoor railroad using Aristo-Craft Stainless. All electrical connections are mechanical. Several manufacturers make various clamping joiners for both rail joints and electrical feeders. Of course, the web of the rail can be drilled and tapped but that gets tiresome, the clamps are a better way to go.
In the outdoor environment the stainless holds up well but many electrical feeders are necessary and a chemical compound helps keep the connections free of contamination.
http://grw.trains.com/beginners/getting-started/2009/06/choosing-rail-for-the-garden-railroad
Aluminum is frequently used by the live-steam/battery-on-board folks.
Regards, Ed
All this talk about a replacement for nickel-silver track is just a solution running around trying to find a problem.
BMMECNYC SeeYou190 OK, we know that nickel silver track still needs to be cleaned, just see all the threads about this. The conductive oxide promise did not formulate well. All track no mater what material will need to be cleaned if you want to have electrical conductivity. Dust is not very conductive (its made of dead skin cells, animal dander, hair particles, etc). SeeYou190 Why do we not have a better, and more expensive, option to choose from? There must be something better to make model rail from. Some sort of stainless steel? Some semi-precious alloy? It has to be soft enough to cut with standard tools, otherwise you will need to purchase more expensive tools to cut your rail. Track fiddler So my point is. Would stainless steel rail and stainless steel track joiners be a better solution. No, see above and below. Track fiddler Especially in the size of our little tinsel tail rails I don't think it would be that expensive. Manufacturers would likely have to re-tool to make Stainless rail. That is going to be added to the cost of your rail. It is harder than N-S. Tooling will wear out faster. Added to the cost of the rail. Track fiddler Guess what, the stuff came off easily I never had a problem with that. Maybe black gunk would too. Have you tried wiping with Isopropyl alcohol? CMX tank car cleaner (albeit expensive) works pretty well (my club uses one on our layout at shows) typically we run it once per day. Track gets dirty at shows very quickly. The black gunk wipes off with a paper towel wetted with Isopropyl alcohol (locomotive wheels must be cleaned as well). Just dont let the cleaning car sit still with the drip running.....causes um.. ballast "issues".
Track fiddler So my point is. Would stainless steel rail and stainless steel track joiners be a better solution.
Track fiddler Especially in the size of our little tinsel tail rails I don't think it would be that expensive.
Track fiddler Guess what, the stuff came off easily I never had a problem with that. Maybe black gunk would too.
Tap me on the shoulder once, we'll have a discussion.
Smack me three times..... Not so much.
Because nickel silver works just fine and there would be a very small market for the more expensive track.
Would any other material really be any better?
Track fiddler...The issue a lot of modelers on this forum have stated is the corrosion, oxidation whatever you want to call it causes lack of continuity in the track connectors joining the rails. I guess this can make sense especially after you ballast and the water and glue seeps into the track joiners and Festers overtime....
I agree that the glue used in ballasting can cause electrical problems if it gets into the rail joiners, but that has nothing to do with oxidation - soldering all rail joints prevents that issue.And, in my opinion, normal oxidation on nickel-silver rails has nothing to do with poor electrical contact either - if it did, I would still be manually cleaning track on a regular basis, and I don't.
Track fiddler BMMECNYC SeeYou190 OK, we know that nickel silver track still needs to be cleaned, just see all the threads about this. The conductive oxide promise did not formulate well. All track no mater what material will need to be cleaned if you want to have electrical conductivity. Dust is not very conductive (its made of dead skin cells, animal dander, hair particles, etc). SeeYou190 Why do we not have a better, and more expensive, option to choose from? There must be something better to make model rail from. Some sort of stainless steel? Some semi-precious alloy? It has to be soft enough to cut with standard tools, otherwise you will need to purchase more expensive tools to cut your rail. Track fiddler So my point is. Would stainless steel rail and stainless steel track joiners be a better solution. No, see above and below. Track fiddler Especially in the size of our little tinsel tail rails I don't think it would be that expensive. Manufacturers would likely have to re-tool to make Stainless rail. That is going to be added to the cost of your rail. It is harder than N-S. Tooling will wear out faster. Added to the cost of the rail. Track fiddler Have you tried wiping with Isopropyl alcohol? CMX tank car cleaner (albeit expensive) works pretty well (my club uses one on our layout at shows) typically we run it once per day. Track gets dirty at shows very quickly. The black gunk wipes off with a paper towel wetted with Isopropyl alcohol (locomotive wheels must be cleaned as well). Just dont let the cleaning car sit still with the drip running.....causes um.. ballast "issues". Tap me on the shoulder once, we'll have a discussion. Smack me three times..... Not so much.
BMMECNYC SeeYou190 OK, we know that nickel silver track still needs to be cleaned, just see all the threads about this. The conductive oxide promise did not formulate well. All track no mater what material will need to be cleaned if you want to have electrical conductivity. Dust is not very conductive (its made of dead skin cells, animal dander, hair particles, etc). SeeYou190 Why do we not have a better, and more expensive, option to choose from? There must be something better to make model rail from. Some sort of stainless steel? Some semi-precious alloy? It has to be soft enough to cut with standard tools, otherwise you will need to purchase more expensive tools to cut your rail. Track fiddler So my point is. Would stainless steel rail and stainless steel track joiners be a better solution. No, see above and below. Track fiddler Especially in the size of our little tinsel tail rails I don't think it would be that expensive. Manufacturers would likely have to re-tool to make Stainless rail. That is going to be added to the cost of your rail. It is harder than N-S. Tooling will wear out faster. Added to the cost of the rail. Track fiddler Have you tried wiping with Isopropyl alcohol? CMX tank car cleaner (albeit expensive) works pretty well (my club uses one on our layout at shows) typically we run it once per day. Track gets dirty at shows very quickly. The black gunk wipes off with a paper towel wetted with Isopropyl alcohol (locomotive wheels must be cleaned as well). Just dont let the cleaning car sit still with the drip running.....causes um.. ballast "issues".
[Tap]...Slow down, Track Layer. No one is smacking your around. It's called logic and reasoning. If you want to discuss reasons why other materials would be "better" than the current offerings then you need to be willing to hear from those who have opposing views from your own.
Why use a material other than Nickel Silver for rail? NS has the electrical and mechanical properties which make it an ideal material for rails. Since the majority of the alloy is copper (55%Cu, 27%Zn, 18%Ni is typical), it has good electrical properties and is soft enough to form it easily. It also solders easily and wears well. Since it is considered an Electronic Grade alloy, it is a good choice.
Silver would be the best, but it would be expensive. Sure, you could silver plate the rail, but it wouldn't be that much of an improvement.
Aluminium is soft enough, but you would require more material to equal copper, so your rails would have to get bigger to compensate. It is also reactive, so you would be cleaning rails constantly to remove the hard oxide that forms. It is also troublesome to solder to and make reliable connections.
Steel, well, it corrodes. Stainless steel is hard to form, and has the same issues, as well as needed tools suited to cut it.
Brass? As we know, it oxidizes, and the oxide is non-conductive. Sure, you could silver plate it, or just silver the rail head yourself. NS is also a copper alloy, with the advantage of a conductive oxide forming on the rail. The disadvantages of NS outweigh those of brass.
Unless someone comes up with a new alloy for rails which has all the advantages of brass and NS with none of the disadvantages, it looks like NS is here to stay.
tstage Track fiddler BMMECNYC Tap me on the shoulder once, we'll have a discussion. Smack me three times..... Not so much. [Tap]...Slow down, Track Layer. No one is smacking your around. It's called logic and reasoning. If you want to discuss reasons why other materials would be "better" than the current offerings then you need to be willing to hear from those who have opposing views from your own. Tom
Track fiddler BMMECNYC Tap me on the shoulder once, we'll have a discussion. Smack me three times..... Not so much.
BMMECNYC
I getcha Tom. I may have been a little off last night. It happens. No hard feelings.
I actually think nickel silver is more than adequate for our track.
The only reason I brought up stainless steel rail and stainless steel joiners there's so many times through the years I've heard forum members suggesting soldering your rail joints. The two reasons being not to get Kinks on your curves and to assure electrical continuity.
I wasn't very good at soldering rail when I was young I always seemed to melt the ties.
At the price of track these days this makes me nervous and I'm probably trying to find any way out of it any way I can.
Track fiddler tstage Track fiddler BMMECNYC Tap me on the shoulder once, we'll have a discussion. Smack me three times..... Not so much. [Tap]...Slow down, Track Layer. No one is smacking your around. It's called logic and reasoning. If you want to discuss reasons why other materials would be "better" than the current offerings then you need to be willing to hear from those who have opposing views from your own. Tom I getcha Tom. I may have been a little off last night. It happens. No hard feelings. I actually think nickel silver is more than adequate for our track. The only reason I brought up stainless steel rail and stainless steel joiners there's so many times through the years I've heard forum members suggesting soldering your rail joints. The two reasons being not to get Kinks on your curves and to assure electrical continuity. I wasn't very good at soldering rail when I was young I always seemed to melt the ties. At the price of track these days this makes me nervous and I'm probably trying to find any way out of it any way I can.
I can't imagine not soldering rail joints..........been doing it since age 13.........
Track fiddler I wasn't very good at soldering rail when I was young I always seemed to melt the ties. At the price of track these days this makes me nervous and I'm probably trying to find any way out of it any way I can.
The technical term is heat sink. Place a heavy washer or other similar lump of metal on the rails just ahead and just behind the joint to be soldered. The sink will absorb the heat before the ties melt. In a pinch a couple of quarters would do.
ROBERT PETRICK Track fiddler I wasn't very good at soldering rail when I was young I always seemed to melt the ties. At the price of track these days this makes me nervous and I'm probably trying to find any way out of it any way I can. The technical term is heat sink. Place a heavy washer or other similar lump of metal on the rails just ahead and just behind the joint to be soldered. The sink will absorb the heat before the ties melt. In a pinch a couple of quarters would do. Robert
I use 4” locking pliers/vice grips as heat sinks. The 4” vice grips are one of my best and most used tools for my hobbies. They work great for heat sinking rails.
https://www.amazon.com/Curved-Locking-Pliers-Nickel-Finish/dp/B005CKN2YY
[/quote]
If soldering nickle silver is not your deal then you may want to read thishttp://www.wikihow.com/Solder-Stainless-Steel
Even wood clamps with the plastic covers removed would work. Also, those folding handle clips that are meant to hold paper sheets together...work well. I have even used the points and frog filing block that handlaidtrack sells. They are fairly substantial blocks of milled steel with flat sides that sit nicely on the rails.
I've been soldering, electroncis at least, since long before I was 13. I've only relatively recently (in the past 12 years or so) soldered track - the only other layout I built as an adult before these last two was a small shelf and I just used sectional track on it.
I still don't use a heat sink of any sort, nor have I melted ties, at least not from the soldering process (whacking the track with the tip of the iron, however...). I don;t use pre-weathered track, but if you do, the area to be soldered must be cleaned, the blackening used to weather the rail inhibits solder. My trick, if you can call it that? First, a temperature controlled soldering station. Not expensive (mine as $50) and I use it for everything, not just soldering track. Second, CLEAN TIP - this is the #1 thing you can do to improve soldering. The temperature controlled station, as long as you don't just crank it up to maximum, helps keep the tip clean from joint to joint, but properly cleaning and tinning the tip will prevent a lot of melting and ruined parts. Third, if we're talking about track to track joints and not soldering a wire to the rail, I put a little paste flux (I use paste ove rliquid - mine is a water based product and they offer it in liquid, gel, and paste - if I want liquid I can dilute the paste with distilled water) inside the joiner before slipping it on the first rail, and then slide the second rail in. You shouldn't be right on top of a tie at this point as you need to remove a tie or two from each piece of flex to get the joiner on (with Atlas track anyway). I apply the iron to the inside along the joiner/rail, and the solder to the outside. The solder will wick in under the joiner but not up into the flange area. With a clean iron and a little flux, this should take no more than a couple of seconds of applying the heat, and the ties won't melt. Probably longer to read the previous sentence than actually carry old the soldering operation. Practice on some scraps, you will quickly get the hang of it and not melt anything.
It's been noted twice in recent posts in this topic (perhaps more) that nickel silver is the ideal choice of metal for our purposes.
I totally agree with that.
But there have been some pretty, um, strange assertions also. Like oxides of nickel silver are conductive (something that goes back a long ways).
When I proposed platinum rail, it was as a joke. But. It was also a true answer to a question.
There have also been some interesting proposals. Like Track fiddler's stainless proposal. The stainless rail joiners MIGHT be a good idea. Worth considering, I suppose. Except that you should never (well, hardly ever) use rail joiners to conduct electricity. They should be viewed as mechanical alignment devices (MAD's, for you bureaucrats). Soldered rail joiners are the exception.
Here's the answer: Rearden Metal!
Admittedly, this is a test for forum participants who know what it is before googling it!
Oops, the color would be an issue.
who shrugged
gregc who shrugged
Good one, Greg. Obviously the ultimate irony as this string has referenced track suppliers . . .
7j43kThe stainless rail joiners MIGHT be a good idea.
With N-S track or Stainless track? You dont want two dissimilar metals in contact in an electrolyitic solution... (the water you get in them when you ballast, moisture in the air). The electricity running through the rails might prevent the galvanic corrosion (Im remembering reading something about the Iowa class battleships having a galvanic corrosion prevention system that uses electricity).
Track fiddlerI wasn't very good at soldering rail when I was young I always seemed to melt the ties. At the price of track these days this makes me nervous and I'm probably trying to find any way out of it any way I can.
I wasnt good at soldering feeders until someone showed me how. Also dont use a Weller soldering gun (I think I was using the 100W/140W version) to do the soldering. A 35W-45W soldering Iron is adequate for most HO scale work.
The soldering gun melts ties in about 8 sec.
BMMECNYC 7j43k The stainless rail joiners MIGHT be a good idea. With N-S track or Stainless track? You dont want two dissimilar metals in contact in an electrolyitic solution... (the water you get in them when you ballast, moisture in the air). The electricity running through the rails might prevent the galvanic corrosion (Im remembering reading something about the Iowa class battleships having a galvanic corrosion prevention system that uses electricity).
7j43k The stainless rail joiners MIGHT be a good idea.
Actually, the electricity running through the rails might CAUSE corrosion.
But, in my experience, stainless steel is pretty non-reactive. So I think stainless rail joiners on nickel silver would probably work out. Note the word "probably". But I'll never know, because:
I don't use rail joiners to conduct electricity. So I'm not feeling threatened by what might go wrong if I did. 'Cause I don't.
I am quite happy using soldered nickel silver rail joiners on nickel silver rails.
I also use non-soldered joiners when I want a slip joint, thermal or otherwise. But then, I don't use that joint to conduct electricity. I have feeders to both adjacent rails.
PS: I see absolutely no reason to bother with dead-rail in HO scale.
Good Plumbing day gone bad. A shark bite coupling we installed on the water maine we moved this morning started hissing and pissing all over the basement floor at a quarter to 5 when I was packing up and ready to leave. ........Homeowner came home at the same time.
Stress!!!
It's a good thing I had two more couplers in the truck and the even more of a better thing that it happened then.
Much better than a phone call at 2 in the morning.
On a better note I was so pleased when I got home and saw all the support. Even after I was a little off last night you guys come and help me out. Nice!
Seeing all the posts pouring in with advice I was looking for really made me feel good after a Troublesome day.
Much appreciated. I'm going to check this all out after dinner.
I may be able to get rid of my soldering phobia. After all.
Thanks again
I HATE thoose Shark Bites things. Never in my house! I hate plumbing so as it is. GF's nephew hooked up shutoff valves for my washer (yeah - the original owners did not have any shutoff there! If the hose were to blow, I would have to run to the opposite end of the house and shut off the water to the whole house!). Serious mess, one he just screwed the valve on to the existing thread, no issues. The other he put a shark bit on to adapt to a threaded piece to screw the valve to. Well, from day 1 it leaked. It stopped dripping if all tension was taken off the hose. I finally got fed up and got a plumbing torch (heck I'm pretty good at soldering everything else...) and a soldered coupler and threaded adapter (luckily everything he got came in paks of 2 so i was able to take the existing things with me and match up the right sizes - usually I either get a couple different things or else make repeat trips to get the right size). Naturally had to shut off the whole house because I was removing the valve. Getting the shark bite off was a real pain, without their special tool. I hacked the heck out of it until it finally came off. Problem 1, he never cleaned up the exposed pipe, it was almost black. Cleaned it all up nice and shiny with sandpaper, applied plumbing flux, stuck the new part on, and lit up my torch. It ain't pretty but no drips when I turned it back on. Considering there was no way to get the torch on about 1/3 of the way around, I'd say it went pretty well. Just like I won't use suitcase or other crimp-only connectors for electrical wiring - no shark bites on the pipes, either. Solder only.
So yes, practice soldering, it's worth the effort to get good at it. Just gotta have the right tool for the job. And things need to be clean to join well. Just don't try to use the plumbing torch on model railroad track. Or the plumbing solder - it's usually acid core and the acid will act like an electrolyte in a soldered electrical joint and will corrode the metal at the joint when electricity flows through it.
BMMECNYC Also dont use a Weller soldering gun (I think I was using the 100W/140W version) to do the soldering. A 35W-45W soldering Iron is adequate for most HO scale work. The soldering gun melts ties in about 8 sec.
I use the 100/140 watt Weller gun all the time for soldering rail joints and wire to rails. I always clean the rail first with a wire brush in motor tool. Then clean and tin the tip of the soldering gun. Takes much less than 8 seconds to solder joint or wire. I have never melted the ties.
I think there are many ways to do this - use the one that works for you.
Interesting story Randy. I can agree150%.
We were working in Uptown Minneapolis where all the slumlords are.
They do pay so we work for them.
They want to pack more tenants into the building to turn a bigger buck so they pay to make it so.
This was a three-story unit. You have to open up all the valves in the whole building and the water will never stop dripping in the basement all day long. You can't solder a pipe with dripping water. Thats why we use shark bites.
Actually shark bites have never failed me. My partner brought some off brand ones and we had a defective one.
Good talking to you again.
And thanks for your advice as it was well recognized.
Soldering track seems much more different to me than soldering plumbing pipes. Neither one is easy. I think it depends on what you're used to doing and how you know how to do it.
Take care
Edit. As soon as I get a break from my work I am going to practice soldering rail joiners using the Info you all shared.
Thank you
rrinker I HATE thoose Shark Bites things. Never in my house! I hate plumbing so as it is. GF's nephew hooked up shutoff valves for my washer (yeah - the original owners did not have any shutoff there! If the hose were to blow, I would have to run to the opposite end of the house and shut off the water to the whole house!). Serious mess, one he just screwed the valve on to the existing thread, no issues. The other he put a shark bit on to adapt to a threaded piece to screw the valve to. Well, from day 1 it leaked. It stopped dripping if all tension was taken off the hose. I finally got fed up and got a plumbing torch (heck I'm pretty good at soldering everything else...) and a soldered coupler and threaded adapter (luckily everything he got came in paks of 2 so i was able to take the existing things with me and match up the right sizes - usually I either get a couple different things or else make repeat trips to get the right size). Naturally had to shut off the whole house because I was removing the valve. Getting the shark bite off was a real pain, without their special tool. I hacked the heck out of it until it finally came off. Problem 1, he never cleaned up the exposed pipe, it was almost black. Cleaned it all up nice and shiny with sandpaper, applied plumbing flux, stuck the new part on, and lit up my torch. It ain't pretty but no drips when I turned it back on. Considering there was no way to get the torch on about 1/3 of the way around, I'd say it went pretty well. Just like I won't use suitcase or other crimp-only connectors for electrical wiring - no shark bites on the pipes, either. Solder only. So yes, practice soldering, it's worth the effort to get good at it. Just gotta have the right tool for the job. And things need to be clean to join well. Just don't try to use the plumbing torch on model railroad track. Or the plumbing solder - it's usually acid core and the acid will act like an electrolyte in a soldered electrical joint and will corrode the metal at the joint when electricity flows through it. --Randy
Well, given a choice I will take CPVC supply piping over copper any day. Totally non reactive, easy, inexpensive.
Been sweating copper plumbing since my teens, but now only when we have to.
Shark bites, use them all the time. No failures when properly installed, best way to join copper to CPVC or PEX. Use them on PEX for hydronic heating systems all the time. Beats the old compression PEX fittings any day.
But, shark bites should not have been used as an adapter to a hose bib valve as you described, that was a no-no.
Washing machines should have a proper valve box, or the valves themselves should be securely mounted, either directly to a wood block on the wall, or soldered to a securely mounted copper line.
Don't blame the product because someone used it incorrectly.......
Properly and neatly sweating copper pipe is actually done by heating the joint, no need to move the torch around the pipe, then removing the flame and flowing the solder into the joint until it just starts to drip/flood.
Funny thing.
The slumlords always pay their bills.
Or, so it's my experience.
AttuvianHere's the answer: Rearden Metal! Admittedly, this is a test for forum participants who know what it is before googling it!
Was I the only one who thought Dagny Taggart sounded like the perfect female companion?
I am not aware of any tests performed related to the electrical conductivity of Reardon Metal. Was it ever used to manufacture wires? I know it was used in rails and bridges. Would a boxcar made of Reardon Metal need to be painted?
SeeYou190 Was I the only one who thought Dagny Taggart sounded like the perfect female companion? I am not aware of any tests performed related to the electrical conductivity of Reardon Metal. Was it ever used to manufacture wires? I know it was used in rails and bridges. Would a boxcar made of Reardon Metal need to be painted? -Kevin
Nah, I think there were (and still are) quite a few that admired her - and thought decidedly less of her sycophant brother and his smarmy pals. Then again, if you support the premises of the book, all the good guys (and the good gal) are top shelf by design. That's the function and fruit of the author's creative purpose. As model railroaders, I think we innately understand the notion.
As for Rearden metal, we're told that its two major elements are iron and copper. I don't think conductivity would be an issue. As for ductility, well, isn't even stainless steel drawn into wire? Maybe not as a rust preventative, but it would be hard to keep such cars from being painted. If the ad men and PR guys in the front office wouldn't see to it, there'd be plenty of local "artisans" to give it a go. But that's a subject trail that ends right here!
John (but not quite Galt)
Shouldn't the prototype replace steel rail with something better. After all they have been using steel for over 130 years.
Nickel silver has only been used for model rail around 40 years.
Didn't the leave one of the very first all-aluminum cars unpainted, to showcase the fact that it was made of aluminum? The FIRST Rearden metal car might go unpainted - after that, no way, the marketing people would get their say and the colorful paint jobs would return.
I just saw an ad for a "new" ho track system from Trix that uses stainless steel rail.
I wonder if this will be an advantage. Does anyone know much about this track?
rrinkerThe FIRST Rearden metal car might go unpainted
If I remember correctly, the first bridge made of Rearden Metal on the John Galt Line was never painted.
Oh, how I want an HO scale set of decals for the Taggart Transcontinental Railroad.
SeeYou190 I just saw an ad for a "new" ho track system from Trix that uses stainless steel rail. . I wonder if this will be an advantage. Does anyone know much about this track? . -Kevin
Not really new! The Trix C-Track is the 2-rail DC version of Marklin´s C-Track 3-rail AC track system, which is in the market for 20 odd years now. It has stainless steel rail, which makes it a pain to solder. Aside from that, both track systems have molded on roadbed, which makes them less appealing.
[quote user="Sir Madog"]
Hi Ulrich,
I didn't have read all the comments on this topic, just a few of them.
But You have completely right, stainless steel is not an easy stuff to solder.
As an iron maker by formation stainless steel need a lot of preparation and clean of before it could be soldered.
One of the biggest problem with stainless steel is the need of an" gas atmosphere" where the part need to be soldered, because without this gaseous atmosphere lot of carbon is included in the solder which cause corrosion of the solder, weak point and even corrosion on the stainless steel.
Second like steel, stainless steel need a hight temperature to be soldered around 800 to 900°centigrade, just to put a solder material and have a good "gluing" action on the stainless steel with a like blowtorch welding process.
This kind of material is soldered generaly by melting the two ends of the parts togheter and this ended with a strong joint, arc welding is also possible but the quality of the solder is much under of the quality of under gaseous atmosphere welding process, temperature here is around 1.300° centigrade as a minimum.
The small solder iron we use would just have a small gluing action on the track with poor contact and solidity; anyway a weak point solder.
The techniques used to solder stainless steel are far from the scope of our hobby, they are named MIG, TIG or arc welding; the blowtorch welding is nearly never used to solder it and anyway the hardware to solder is big and need protection and power.
I'm not an engineer, but I'm not sure about the conductive electrical quality of stainless steel, for sure this quality is not very better than common steel wire.
Further, if the contact in a locomotive are not better than today, put it on an stainless steel track just move the problems from the track to the locomotive.
And an another bad news, copper find in all the wire is not very compatible in soldering unity with steel or stainless steel because of corrosive action between the two materials because of chemicals and mineral action, far from what I can explain.
So if stainless steel could be a solution about corrosion, working with it is beyond the scope of our hobby.
And about platinium, the cost will be prohibitive, and for soldering we come back with the same troubles as stainless steel, just platinium need more protection to offer a solder joint which not corrode and need more heat than steel or stainless steel to be soldered, so forget it.
Hope this help.
Here's some enthusiasm and it never did get resolved
TF
Maybe because there's nothing really to solve? Nickle silver is still the best choice when comparing all teh pros and cons. I suppse there might be some alloy out there that solders as easily as nickle silver, conducts as good or better, resists corrosion (no one really promised nickle silver would bring an end to track cleaning, though in a dust free environment, you don;t have to do much - it still remains that the oxide of brass is a complete non-conductor and that of nickle silver does conduct, just not as good as clean nickle silve. The problem is not the oxidization layer, it's all the other gunk that accumulates,. ANd gets made worse by people using abrasice cleaners), is easily formed into rail shapes, is flexible, etc. But if it costs 10x per pound compared to nickle silver, it will never sell, so why bother? For anything with a significantly higher price to supplant nickle silver, it would have to fix everything about NS that is neutral or a negative. Without taking away any of the positives, or adding new negatives (besides the cost).
Nickle silver in model railroad use may only be essentially 40-50 years old, but nickle silver in other uses goes back a lot longer than that. Many of the same characteristics that make it work as model train track make it work for other purposes as well. Any replacement alloy would have to also be useful outside of model railroading, the market just isn't big enough, even if 100% of model railroaders switched overnight (and you know that will NEVER happen). We've had a full line of Code 83 products for HO scale, which looks a lot better than Code 100, and plenty of people use nothing but COde 100 still. Plenty of people still use brass track even. Even when the #1 supplier of track was having problems maintaining stock, Rapido's attempt to fill the void with perfectly usable flex track fell right on its face. People who didn;t switch to Peco just waited it out until Atlas started shipping again - that's how conservative model railroaders are. They'd rather stop working than switch to a different product. And when you're talking something that's also different, and not just an alternative that looks and acts exactly the same - even fewer will try it. And unless you were already going to tear upo your layout and start a new one, how many would actually rip out what they already built and replace the track? Not many. Maybe use the new stuff going forward, but go back and rip up all the previous work? Not likely.
Wow Randy
I hope you breathed once or twice while you said all that.
I still haven't hit the rack yet but apparently this tread still isn't resolved.
I'm sorry, I just threw this one in here because it was one of my favorite threads through the years. I got tripped up in the middle. Still like it though. Seems to be continuing
You have a lot of good points Randy. I would have to agree with them.
Track fiddlerExcept that there is no silver in nickel-silver. And it is a worse conductor than brass.
Nickel silver is a type of brass that because of aditives appears silver (which is closer to the appearance of the prototype steel) than brass which appears yellow.
Jus an aside to this thread. Over here in the UK there was a gentleman who ran his 00/H0 locomotives with batteries inside. He said he never had to clean the rails as no electricity ran thru them.
Because of no electricity running thru the rails he was able to make some wonderful and weird objects. His 0.2.0 locomotives were a delight to see. As were the carriages that ran with them.
His modeling hero was Rowland Emmet and he always signed anything 'Emmetman'.
Now he probably will be building models for the 'Great Model Railroad/Railway' 'upstairs'.
David
To the world you are someone. To someone you are the world
I cannot afford the luxury of a negative thought
Mr. Emett would be sad to see his name so misspelled -- and in a monicker, too! "Emmet" is for ants... just like "Emmett" is for . Everyone with the interest should join this...
We have discussed various flavors of 'dead rail' repeatedly on this forum, including the varieties set up to charge the batteries asynchronously, and preserve DCC-like logic signals sent through the trackwork when Lenz-style power modulation is not used. Track cleaning would still be required in many such cases (and this, in fact, would give some pretty fair comparison numbers for crud as a consequence of electrical causes like accelerated oxide and microarcing vs. crud as 'environmental settling' and humidity, etc. in the layout room) but presumably far less critical to operation -- ditto for wheels, I think.
There are very good solutions for joining small wire to stainless steel; they were evolved quite nicely for far thinner sections of stainless in far more critical applications in the airframe industry. However, they involve techniques unfamiliar to modelers (especially as you get into the higher-temperature brazes appropriate to high-speed flight!) including spot heating and the equivalent of resistance soldering. (A fringe benefit being that great heat at high speed in a small spot area also results in limiting afterheat distortion of ties, etc. - most cost-effective alloys of stainless are relatively poor conductors of heat, which is why they aren't used in most steam-locomotive boiler fabrication successfully
The most common stainless alloys can work-harden severely, I don't think this would normally be a substantial concern in model trackwork (and in fact might be an advantage for gleaming) except that cuts need to be made with a sharp saw and, once started, kept cleanly cutting at the bottom of the kerf right to the end. I don't know if you'd need a roller arrangement to bend rail smoothly in flexible track.
Discussions I have read indicate that the 'nickel silver' rail alloy has just enough 'white' alloying agent in it to make the copper color of the 'balance' disappear. Presumably this conveys the anti-tarnish "oxide layer" protection at that level of alloying.
Plating with non-oxidizing/better conducting material isn't going to be satisfactory in many cases, particularly if the track is cut to fit, or exposed to any material or circumstances that induces the plating to separate. I had thought at one point of testing whether explosive-facing methods (as tried in Russia to hard-face full-scale rail) could be used to join a very hard face layer to something relatively cheap and a good conductor (like a typical electrical brass) but this is more work than making the whole rail out of noncorroding material, and probably not worth the cost and effort even if it worked.
For a while there, I was expecting alloy or bullion silver to come into the general range of 'hobby pricing', in particular as medical imaging replaced silver-based X-ray emulsions. That hasn't quite happened... yet. A good cuprosilver probably represents a reasonable rail material, could be rolled into reasonable small profile, and there is far less sulfur in the air in these days of ULSD and decline in coal-fired heat and electricity. Remains to be seen how the market would receive it.
Battery power has become much more common in garden railroads. Of course, the size of the models makes a difference.
Rail-powered garden railroads fight a constant battle with track cleaning and wiring. The battery solves both those issues.
I would love an inexpensive battery powered locomotive in N Scale.
York1 John
I asked my doctor if I gave up delicious food and all alcohol, would I live longer? He said, "No, but it will seem longer."
Wireless DCC has been here by a couple of companies. Battery tecnoligy is here too but it is changing so fast that no one wants to commit. the battery stuff is changing about every 6 months or so, makes Moore's law seem slow.
No, the wireless versions broadcasts the DCC packets over a wireless link of one sort or another. Having a keep alive in a regualr DCC loco requires getting the DCC signal from the track - the loco will continue based on the last received instructions until the capacitor drains if it encounters dirty or unpowered track. Hence I can take my Walthers Plymouth switcher off the track and let it run across my desk like a windup toy.
Lastspikemike I had thought that wireless DCC still needed to pick up the track DCC signal.
I had thought that wireless DCC still needed to pick up the track DCC signal.
LastspikemikeFor me the appeal would be compatibility between DC track power and DCC control. No more dual systems with failsafe power switching.
It would not be *that* difficult to build in an optically-isolated conversion bridge to recognize, and utilize, DCC track-power modulation in addition to, or as a default in the absence of, the wireless modulation. I would argue that such capability be designed in as part of a dead-rail standard -- but then again, I'm from New York and always have operating contingencies ad nauseam built in as a reflex. [You would have one or more CVs assigned to handle the priority of wireless vs. track reception and handoff ... only one, done correctly, would serve for most circumstances...]
The technology for wireless power to locomotives has been around for more than a century; in fact the development at Wardenclyffe was predicated on a version of it. There are a number of prospective drawbacks that make its acceptance, shall we say, decidedly uncertain. Somewhat more likely (or less unlikely) is the adaptation of Qi-like high-frequency charging at distributed points on a 'dead' layout to keep onboard primary storage well-charged in normal operation. In my impression these types of solution are nowhere near as good as use of 'available electricity' no matter how modulated or provided to perform near-continuous charging -- and for systems to prompt users properly when that electricity is wanting.
Wayne: be sure you include a connector somewhere on the rear of the tender that will facilitate his adding one or more 'dedicated cars' with more battery capacity in them. I suspect he's unlikely to get 'extended runtime' from an open-frame motor even with NIB retrofitted field magnets...
One of the secret projects in dead rail involves self-making and breaking connections to 'external batteries' via the couplers. This is a bit less concern in "British" practice as it can be done fairly expediently through buffers, but it becomes of interest to North American modelers if physical or noncontact wiring connections (e.g. from the tender via a harness to following vehicle(s) or some kind of inductive loop coupling in car ends) is deemed undesirable.
It could be argued that such a connection between cars might also facilitate extended pickup wiring...
I was the OP for this thread over three years ago.
When I made this post I was designing my next (and last) layout, and had not bought any track yet.
I have never been as happy with HO track as I was with Peco's "code 55" track when I was in N scale. I was hoping there was something to be had that was better before I built my lifetime HO scale layout.
Nothing came to light.
I bought a huge amount of NOS Walthers/Shinohara old style (non-DCC friendly) turnouts for the layout. I have used these before, and I am familiar with them.
Since none of this matters anymore, I have decided what track to use, and discussion is drifting away from topic... the moderators can lock this thread.
I was in the process of posting that 'dead rail' issues ought to be moved to their own thread to keep the focus on better rail composition, in part to keep the thread on the OP's indicated topic, when I read the foregoing post. (It should still be so moved, to its own topic, if moderators care to do so).
SeeYou190I have never been as happy with HO track as I was with Peco's "code 55" track when I was in N scale. I was hoping there was something to be had that was better before I built my lifetime HO scale layout. Nothing came to light.
On the other hand, reviving it after 2017 has in fact brought up some more alternatives, and I think if it can be so revived, it can be so preserved as an open topic ... provided that it stays on better conductivity and maintenance concerns, or more accurate or better rail form or ... what's the right word for ease of working with something to make or build better track?
The thread nominally and practically has had little if anything to do with personal preference in choosing a track system, and as such, has no reason to be terminated when someone, OP or otherwise, elects to make a peripheral choice of that kind. In my opinion, anyway. Anybody reading and responding to the original post as actually written will agree with me.
What, as an interesting index of the 'possible', is the current street value of that "$12 piece of flextrack that never needs cleaning"?
(And what is "Resolition"? )
OvermodWayne: be sure you include a connector somewhere on the rear of the tender that will facilitate his adding one or more 'dedicated cars' with more battery capacity in them. I suspect he's unlikely to get 'extended runtime' from an open-frame motor even with NIB retrofitted field magnets...
I agree, and had also thought about putting better magnets in the motor or replacing it with a can motor, but he's rather adamant about his choices and, knowing him fairly well, I think that he'd prefer to first see if his choices have any merit. I don't doubt that I'll need to make some modifications after he's tried it (if it doesn't go up in smoke), but if he wants the rest of his locos converted, he'll be pretty-much on his own. Hopefully, what I'm doing will at least work, and if it's satisfactory, can be used for him to simply follow the mess that's in the tender as a guide.
The surprising aspect of this experiment, for me, at least, is that he's been a very strident opponent of anything to do with DCC, for as long as I've known him.
LastspikemikeReading the OP reveals the point made that nickel silver rail is very old "technology", the connection being with conductivity problems.
Not exactly. I referred to trackage in HO being 1978 technology, which I admit was a year chosen more-or-less at random.
The nickel silver rail is one problem, but this thread went parallel with a couple of other threads I started at the same time that were about other shortcomings with track design.
This thread is old, has lost its context with the other threads, has went through more than what I intended, and I have come to a resoltution on the entire HO scale tackage subject.
Kevin, you need to substitute the glue bottle from the other thread here, in place of the horse.
I confess that the last couple of days of discussion have made me think carefully about alternative rail construction, though, in a way that would not have happened had the thread not been revived as it was.
As per request by the OP...