What is the consensus out there? Should you sodder track leads (wire) to Atlas Code 83 switches?
Thanks
Chris
I usually solder my feeders to rail joiners rather than to the rails themselves, but I don't suppose there's much of a reason not to solder them to the rails if that's your preference.
I solder frog power wires to the outsides of the frogs.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
I solder all of my rail joiners, then cut gaps as necessary to facilitate track control. For many years, there were only two wires feeding power to the track for the entire layout. A few years ago, I added a couple more, but I'm not convinced that they were necessary.I have about 300' of mainline (not counting double-tracked areas, staging tracks, and industrial spurs). This is DC operation, so the wiring is very simple.
Wayne
I have a fully current-detected DCC operation with ~120 feet route for the main. I thought I had too many feeders. Then I painted the track ... paint gets into rail joiners and reduces or eliminates conductivity.
Now I solder joniners for short lengths of track ... until they find a feeder. This way, there is a soldered path to the bus for every piece of track. Many joiners are left unsoldered (between feeders), and my track is on foam so I am hoping when summer comes around I won’t have any temp issues.
For switches, they were all laid before discovering the problem and now I am stuck. I was able to do a couple of fixes: I wired a very thin wire between the part of the point rail that pivots and the part that doesn’t. I also put CRC 2-26 lubricant on all pivots. this has helped a lot and now the switch matrix at my largest terminus is working fine.
I am also switching to brush painting the track with acrylics rather than the spray method. Way healthier, less messy and you can control where the paint ends up better. Mix it a bit thick and it works fine.
NP
There is definitely a lot of personal preference and opinion on the topic, but I think if you research the subject on a few zillion forums, you would find the conventional wisdom suggests that you use rail joiners only for rail alignment and use feeders for electrical connections. I am in the middle of a huge wiring effort now to connect a lot of track recently laid. I previously (that is, my 20-years ago lazier self) relied on joiners. And, admittedly, it works/worked in most places. But, eventually some intermittent problems show up and sometimes they're a pain to (1) diagnose, and (2) fix. This time around, I am putting feeders on every piece of track regardless of whether that's a turnout, a nine-foot curve soldered together (for reliable alignment in spite of subroadbed "breathing" in response to humidity changes) or a 6-inch piece of flex track. It's definitely more work -- especially if you're considering occupancy detection as you now have to have a "sub bus" strategy in place to deal with the fact that you have multiple pieces of track within one occupancy block. But, I enjoy running the trains. Reliability is a top priority for me. So, I am investing the time now to avoid, or at least greatly reduce disappointing repairs later. FWIW.
It seems there's no solid rule about soldering or not with track leads and switches. I def solder every length of track and curves. Most of the turnout track is connected w/o soldering using Atlas joiners.
When I solder feeders to the rails, I strip and tin about 1/2" of the wire. I use 24-26 gauge wire, making the length about 6" longer than the track base (foam, plywood, etc). I flatten and bend the end of the wire that will attach to the rail. I tin a small spot on the web of the rail, then solder the feeder to the rail web. When the feeder is pulled through the layout, it's almost invisible after ballasting.
Marlon
See pictures of the Clinton-Golden Valley RR