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K and cacole; It is true you will get materials eaten away when you pass an electric current through dissimilar materials. However it is not true that they need to be immersed in water or even salt water. The level of voltage and current only  will have an effect on the time taken to eat these materials away. !2 V DC with a minimal current flow will do the trick as it has happened to me and this well below what i have in my layout. However to be fair my layout is in the tropics.  It will certainly happen if you pass DC especially, through dissimilar materials, it is just a matter of how long and how much and to my mind why do it unless it is absolutely necessary. One of the worst cases i have seen is when i was a young man training to be a tecommunications technician in Sydney. We had to do a stint working with a lines section and mine was in Sydney's eastern suburbs, where at that time they still had trams.You had lead sheathed telephone cables running alongside a tram track, say about 5 metres away. When the line ran around a corner the earth return current of the DC from the trams took a short cut; it would enter the lead sheath and then leave it again and you regularly got a hole you could put your fist in and globules the size of golf balls on the other side. No water was involved and the cable had its own little tunnel which was not damp in any way that i can remember. This is an exaggerated case but never the less electolysis is very real and should not be encouraged unless their is no alternative.   Rgds Ian
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