Feeder Wiring

[nikoniko74]

I have a question. I'm new to this so take it easy on me if this is a dumb question.

I believe I saw in my local hobby shop that Atlas sells wired track joiners. They are relatively expensive. I plan on building a medium/larger (maybe three 8x4 plywood) starter layout.

I will be building using mostly flex track and my track will be DCC. To save a lot of time, would I notice a difference if I soldered and used my own wired track joiners instead of soldering directly to the track? I would plan on using one set per 30" flex track.

I say this would save a bunch of time because I can do this while at work. I work a 14 day on/off schedule and my job is very much a hurry up and wait job, so I have a ton of free time while at work. I could be doing something productive, like soldering wired track joiners. haha.

Does anyone else do this, or will there be a large performance loss?

Thanks.

 

[Trucula]

I made many of those. The wire connection will be fine if soldered properly. The connection with the jointer to the rail will be your only future problem. Guys solder direct to rail to avoid one connection. Anytime you have a connection, you have a place for a problem. (open circuit)..Less connections= less problems

 

[ICG/SOU]

On my layout I soldered feeder to the bottoms of the joiners, then soldered the joiners to both rails. On rare occasions the original solder (the wire to the joiner) would come undone, but most of the time it would not. It was hard seeing where I had feeders (even without ballast) that I ended up painting the adjacent tie ends so I could see where they were.