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I'm assuming your soldering skills are zero or border line zero and hence your reluctance to solder. Don't be upset at this comment, until recently soldering was something else other people did. Now that I have installed one third of my layout track (about 110 feet) I am now good at soldering. After about your sixth solder attempt, and having melted 4 rail road ties, you get good at it quickly. Here is the quick and dirty way to do it. First forget everything you have read about a clean iron and filed before you start - not necessary. The secret of good soldering isn't the solder but the flux. I solder in N scale which is even more challenging than HO. I have decided that real men solder in N...lol. Okay. Tin your wire, which means add flux to it (I use liquid Rosen flux), put the wire end on the solder, heat the wire end, not the solder. The solder will flow into the wire (I use stranded wire). Next, some will say to tin the rail, don't do this - you could end up with a mess and it isn't necessary. Now paint the rail on the outside with your liquid flux, tip the tinned tip into the liquid flux (prior to all of this bend the tinned wire tip so there is a 90 degree bend). Now this next part sounds hard but is easy. Put the wire where you painted the rail with flux. Puth the tip of the iron on top of rail, directly over the tinned wire touching the rail and flux. Now bend the iron down so that it touches the tinned wire. The solder will flow from the tinned wire into the rail, remove iron as soon as solder has melted, hold wire for about 5 seconds. And you are done. More feeders is better than one set of feeders. If it were me on a 4 by 8, I would have at least 6 to 8 feeders; too many is better than not enough.
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