A Track Soldering Project

[jonathan]

Fellow Bachonians,

Some threads in recent past have discussed electrical continuity (wire glue, soldering, track feeders, etc.).

Thought I'd share a recent maintenance project that might be helpful (or not).

Occasionally I like to run my vintage locos on the mainline; one reason being they are much more sensitive to trackwork that might need attention.  One of my favorite testers is a Bowser G5, you may remember from a couple years ago.  Anyway, I discovered two problems:  a dead turnout and a tunnel with greatly reduced conductivity. I cleaned the track prior to the maint. check.

The dead turnout turned out to have a dead stock rail (hope that's the right term).  It's the middle rail that sends the train on the straight route:



Rather than tear out the turnout, I experimented.  I soldered a small wire to that rail:



Then soldered the other end of the wire to where the turnout joins the next piece of track:



Problem solved.  Ten minutes of work that saved me big bucks for a new turnout.

Sorry I painted the solder work before taking pics.

For the tunnel, I added two track feeders and connected to my bus wire.  Only one photo turned out.  This is the rail on the opposite side from the viewer:



The feeders were put as close to the tunnel entrance as possible.  I also soldered a few extra joiners along the mainline.  Yes, I removed the paint (weathering) before soldering:



This solved the tunnel problem as well.  Why am I checking my trackwork right now?  There are a couple of EM1's coming with my name on 'em.  With sound installed, I'm sure they are going to draw a little more amperage than my medium sized locomotives.

Hope this helps someone in some small way. It sure helped my layout.

Regards,

Jonathan

[armchairmodeller]

Good work Jonathan and a good tip to overcome electrical supply problems. Electrical bonding between sections of rail is very common on the prototype here in the UK, to assist with track circuit and train detection systems, so it is ususal to see a "jumper" cable bolted or welded to the outsides of the running rail, so your method to improve conductivity and over come voltage drop has a precedent in the real thing.

Good Tip that I'm sure will help many less experienced modellers.

Armchair

[richg]

Nice work.
Anyone looking at the photos, you can do his also. It is not expensive. Preparation is the biggest part. A pencil type soldering iron, say 4o watts can be used but you need  clean tip, preferably plated tip, rosin flux and say, 0.032 inch electrical solder. A scratch brush from Micro Mark cleans the spot on the rail for soldering. Practice with scrap wire and scrap track.
A good joint will be shiny and smooth. A bad joint will be rough and lumpy.
Don't depend on rail joiners for electrical.
Prototype roads bond with electrical cable.

Rich

[jonathan]

Thanks, guys.

I picked up my soldering kit at Radio Shack for about $10 US.  It came with a 30 watt iron, prep/scratch tool, heat sink, solder and a small stand.  I've replaced the tip once already (wore it down to a nub).  Bought some flux at Home Depot.  Think the jar of flux paste cost more than the solder kit. I steal my wife's old sponges and cut them up for cleaning the solder tip.  Just put a wet sponge in some kind of receptacle and you're all set.

Compared to rolling stock, track and scenery; a small soldering set is pretty inexpensive, and worth every penny.

I've been using a couple of really big, heavy washers as heat sinks when I solder track.  Just lay two washers across the rails, on either side of the solder point.  Prevents melting the ties.

My first attempts at soldering were pretty frightening, but it didn't take long to get the hang of it. 

Regards,

Jonathan

[jward]

i NEVER solder on the inside of the rail, unless it's flangeways  for guardrails or frogs on a handlaid switch. why tempt things? it's so much easier to do things on the outside of the rail, where it doesn't interfere with the flanges. and once you paint the solder joint, it becomes almost invisible.

[armchairmodeller]

I agree with jward. Soldering on the inside of a running rail is asking for trouble. Jonathon's method is effective and cannot interfere with the wheel flanges. Provided the solder is not "proud" of the running surface of the rail it will not interfere with the wheel treads either. Jonathon has done a pretty good job of blending the wire to the track by use of colour and/or weathering. Furthermore it would be a pretty good eye to spot the join with so much other scenic activity going on. His is a good way of dealing with track "in situ", without having to lift it.

If you know you will need a "jumper" or additional supply, another method I would suggest takes a little more forward planning.  Take a section of track and turn it upside down. Remove some of the webbing that connects the sleepers (ties) to expose the underside of the track. Solder  short(ish) sections of wire on the underside of the running rail. A couple of small holes, just wide enough to feed the wires, drilled through the base board. Feed the "drop wires" through the board  and position the track, with running surface upward.  The "drop wires" then appear beneath the base board and can be connected to the supply by whichever method you choose. The beauty of this method is that the wires are invisible.
The problen with this method is that it is difficult to get at once the track is fixed in place.
I am sure this method will be described elsewhere, in a more informative way, on this or other forums with illustrations. The trick with soldering is to have clean surfaces and get in and out fast.

ACM

[jonathan]

When I manage to plan ahead, I like to solder feeder wires to every rail joiner.  
I think I've shown these before:





The main advantage is ease of removing the track when it's time to finally tear down your layout.  It will happen one day unfortunately.

All the electrical repairs I had to perform, involve trackwork completed when I first started this layout.  I didn't know what I was doing then.  Luckily I'm able to go back and improve things without having to tear out the original work.

Regards,

Jonathan

[Jhanecker2]

To Jonathan :  That is a very good method of insuring electrical integrity .  It makes the soldering much easier to do without melting ties and  gives much better results in getting a proper solder joint .  I have only question ? In your photo  you have blue conductors and white conductors (positive & negative) . What are the orange conductors for ?  John   II

[jward]

hmmm.
if you don't want carpentry or soldering, let me build your layout for you. you can do the scenery.

seriously though, i am not afraid of soldering. i handlay all my tracks, soldering together a switch from individual pieces of rail is what i do. so it really doesn't scare me. soldered rail joints are much less likely to fail, and when using flex track or handlaying, soldered joints help keep the rails in line on curves.

code 100 rail is alot different than code 70. with code 70 especially you do need to keep your soldered feeders off the running surfaces of the rail. the next size down, code 55, is small enough you can't even spike the rail down without wheels bumping over the spike heads. that, you have to solder to ties made from pc board.

the pc board brings up another idea. you could use the copper cladding on the pc board for your wire connection, and not solder to the rail at all except for the connection between the tie and rail. and that is mostly on the bottom of the rail.

[jonathan]

to JH2,

I use scrap wire salvaged from any kind of thrown-out electronic cable I can find.  Usually, I can't be particular about color coding my layout wiring.  Any wire with color tends to go to the positive feeds, while the whitish wires go to the negative feeds.

I stopped buying layout wire about three years ago.  Recycling is good, especially when it leads to zero cost for wiring.

Regards,

Jonathan

[RAM]

If you really want to plan ahead.  I have a friend who solders the wires to the bottom of the rails.  Drills a hold so the wire goes down and is not visible.  This is something you need to do while you a laying the track.

[armchairmodeller]

When I manage to plan ahead, I like to solder feeder wires to every rail joiner.  
Regards,

Jonathan

Soldering to the joiners is good, but only where tracks are physically joined. If you have a "lift out "section or "fold up" section joiners are not an option. The method used by Jonathon in his initial post or the one suggested by RAM and myself would be better.

armchair

[Doneldon]

I solder to rail joiners and have had no problems so far but I'm aware that I'm relying on the rail joiners to get the power to my rails the same as if I had soldered to one rail but was using a rail joiner to carry the current to the adjacent rail. Accordingly, my habit is to put just a tiny bit of electrical socket lube (the stuff you can use in conventional light bulb sockets) in every joint.

When I solder, whether to a rail joiner or directly to a rail (for example, roundhouse tracks), I scratch clean my metal with one of those fiberglass wood distressers, put a tiny dab of rosin flux on, barely warm the metal so the flux flows, tin both metal surfaces and then quickly heat the joint until the solder melts together. I actually apply heat for only a second or two and I've never melted a tie. Well, I've never melted a tie since I've been using this technique. Before that it wasn't unusual to see globular, half-missing ties on my tracks until I replaced the ill-fated ties which were too close to the ends of the track sections.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                -- D