Soldering rail connectors...good idea?


Night Train

Night Train

Member
Is it a good idea to solder rail joiners to the track? Is this commonly done? What are the advantages/disadvantages?

i just finished the wiring to my switches and soldering the wires together from the switch machines to the wire to the switch controllers and I'm on a soldering roll, so to speak. If I'm going to solder the track together, now's the time.
 
Not knowing your layout construction makes this one tough to answer, so just a general comment or two:

Be sure to allow for expansion & contraction of the track. My club used typical 3 ft flex track sections and did not solder the joiners but did solder feed wires to each individual track section. If you are using sectional track this could get tiresome, but relying on just the friction fit of the joiners to pass the current will cause issues you will have to deal with in the long term.
 
Having feeders soldered to track every two to three feet is fairly common to have reliable power. Maybe even more feeders in a freight yard or area with numerous turnouts. You could solder rail joiners to keep lines made of sectional track from shifting.
 
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Thanks for the responses.

About those feeder wires to the track...

When adding more feeder connectors to different parts of the track, do you connect those to the same power pack? Or should you add auxiliary power packs? I'm using DCC with MRC Prodigy Express.

As you can see I don't know too much about this....thanks for your patience.
 
Depends on your layout size. For DCC use the quarter test Digitrax recommends. If shorting the rails directly doesn't trip your circuit protection at the furthest point from your power supply, you will need additional feeders and possibly a booster. A properly sized bus for power feed is better than just letting the rails do it. Feed from the bus to the rails every few feet
 
Ive only built one small layout , I soldered every joint. This gave problems with expansion and contraction of the board causing the tracks to buckle on the longer straight sections but no problems on corners where the track can just expand out. I ended up cutting expansion gaps on the straights. Next time I will only solder the corners because the easiest way to lay flexitrack is to solder them together then pull it into a curve.
 
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