I recently purchased a atlas ho-roundhouse (item #709) it work great with the atlas turntable.
1 Problem! there is no way to wire the 3 roundhouse stalls!
i think im gonna haft to solder wires to the sides of the rails only problem is i gotta get a soldering iron and figure out how it works. anyone know another way to wire the stalls?
Try Atlas terminal joiners. They are rail joiners with a short wire already soldered onto the joiner. Place it inside the roundhouse, drill a hole on your layout & connect the wire to a power source. You will need one pair (3 packs) for the three tracks.
Sorry to be blunt, but model railroaders really need to learn to solder. It took me a bit, and I'm still not as good as others, but I can do it.
I'm not familiar with the Atlas roundhouse, but I'm not sure how the rail joiners will help. Where are you going to out them?
Gene
I have to agree with Gene on this. Sooner or later something on the railroad will have to be soldered. There are numerous soldering primers on the web. You can visit one of them by clicking on the link below:
http://members.shaw.ca/sask.rail/model-book/soldering/soldering.html (http://members.shaw.ca/sask.rail/model-book/soldering/soldering.html)
For soldering feeders to rails, installing decoders, adding lighting to buildings, and that sort of thing, a soldering iron rated at about 25 watts and equipped with a 1/16" tip is a good choice. A soldering iron stand with sponge holder is nice but a sardine can with a piece of viscose sponge works just as well. Dampen the sponge with water and wipe the soldering iron on it to clean off the dross (dead solder.) Tin the iron with a bit of small diameter rosin core solder. The 1 mm size is a good choice. Use this solder for soldering wires as well.
You just slide the terminal joiners onto the ends of the rails, drill some small holes through the roundhouse floor (same as you'd have to do if you soldered wires to the rails), pass the wires down through the holes and connect them to whatever power source you're using. When you learn to solder don't forget that a little paste flux (non-acid) is a great help.
I agree with Gene.
It's a basic requirement that all modeller must be able to solder. This is especially true once you get away from toy train 'set track' and into more scale modelling using flex track or hand-laid track.
KCS,
You mean the Atlas roundhouse comes without rails and you have to install them yourself? How unlike Atlas!
Gene
The one I had back in the early 80's didn't come with the rails installed.
Soldering is probably to best way to do it. My friend has that exact item, and I think he was able to drive it in the stalls without any connection (guessing it jumped from the turntable?), but soldering is THEE best way. The plastic base makes for easy drilling. I found out soldering was needed not to long ago. Our neighbor past away, and the daughter who was clearing it out, knew I was trying to learn, so she gave me a Craftsman soldering gun. As well as some tooling that came along. But I'm still waiting to find time for me and my dad to practice using it. Until then, I can't solder, and can't reconnect needed power wires in one standard Bachmann EMD F9 (ATSF warbonnet), and one Life-Like standard GP38-2 (ATSF Blue/Yellow warbonnet). But you could possibly use what Life-Like Power-Loc System uses. Instead of standard connectors that leveled track and Bachmann E-Z track uses, Power-Loc uses a copper connector that instead of sliding, it's bent downwards so they meet flat to flat, and not rail to rail.
(http://www.trains.com/MRR/objects/images/mr_ht_8-02_firsttrainset2_05.jpg)
Look completely to the left, the track piece with the black base, note that is Power-Loc, see. The joiners are flat ended and just meet face to face.
Hope this helps with your Roundhouse, and may spark any ideas to fix your problem. :)
The Atlas Roundhouse comes with stalls angled at 15 degrees to match there turntable that indexes at 15 degrees. I don't believe it comes with ready laid track . Please don't use a soldering gun , it has a excessive amount of wattage . Use a small soldering iron of approxiamately 25 watts , remembering to clean , flux , and pre- tin both parts and the iron .
I use a 140 watt soldering gun with no melting of ties or structure pieces at all, but someone not as experienced as I am will probably have a bad time of it.
Making a search for "soldering" yields many sites with good instructions and diagrams to help learn how to solder.
Gene
I have been soldering electronic components for 50 years. Like KCS my favorite tool is a Weller 100/140 soldering gun, but I also have 15 and 30 watt pencil tip irons for fine work.
For that 3rd and 4th hand often needed, I use a tool called the "Third Hand".
http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/001212.php
For heat sinks I use GC Electronics part number 9077-1 small clamps, and H3-388 tweezers (the kind you have to squeeze to open).
http://www.gcelectronics.com/order/catdisplay.asp?CatID=16
Download the PDF in the "soldering tools" section.
I use only "Savbit" and "Kester" multicore solder. The only time I use paste flux is for sweating copper water pipes (which requires no-lead solder and a torch).
Like all skills, soldering requires a technique learned by practice and experience.
My club's modular staging yard uses aligns the track with an ingenious contraption that can be adapted for your use, but still requires soldering. They took a very small diameter pipe, and soldered that to the the outside of each rail ending 1/2" from the end of the rail. They then bent a piece of a smaller diameter brass rod into an L shape. When the turntable is aligned right. Slide the brass rods, already positioned on the table, across the gap, into into the brass rods on the Roundhouse Tracks. This routes power from the TT to the Roundhouse tracks, and also maintains the alignment. :) Although In your case you should probably hard wire the roundhouse tracks as well. You can never have too many leads.
I got 1 of those cold soldering things and soldered wires to teh track and drilled holes through the base of the roundhouse, just gonna be hard to cover the wires with ground n stuff when i get to the point. (the way i happend to solder it)
should i take out all my rail joiners and solder the track together?
You don't have to remove the joiners to solder the track. Just put a little paste flux on the outside edge of the rail so it covers the joiner and some of the rail. Apply a hot soldering tool to the joiner and apply the solder. As the flux melts it will flow into the joiner. As the solder melts it will follow the flux everywhere it goes, making the rail and the joiner into a solid unit. Don't get any solder on the top of the rail. It can be a bear to remove.
This is a fairly old thread (by forum standards), but I thought I'd throw in my two cents. As an expert at melting ties, and other items of plastic, I cannot recommend a soldering station more highly. I bit the bullet and purchased the American Beauty Induction Soldering Station from Micro Mark and have been completely satisfied with the results. Induction soldering is easy and will result in a much better joint without the more-than-occasional melted ties that ordinary soldering guns produce. I do agree that one of the basic skills all model railroaders need to possess is that of soldering. Why not buy some old brass track at the next train show and practice on that? Atlas brass Snaptrack goes for pennies and is a lot cheaper than using Peco (or whatever) nickel-steel products.
While we are at it: in my opinion it is not advisable to solder turnouts. These are mechanical devices and, friend, they will need replacement. All my turnouts (Peco) are held in place with rail joiners for easy replacement. BTW I have already had to replace one unit...slide back the joiners and pull out the turnout...easy.
I have used "induction" soldering for 40 years. Originally I used it to solder delicate gold filled eyewear without marring the finish. The "solder" was actually tiny strips and wire made of expensive gold metal. I agree it's the only way to go.
The repair specialist at Caboose Hobbies uses this technique for expensive brass locomotives.
At Pyle National we used Induction Soldering equipment for soldering cable wires to contacts for connectors that utilized solderwell contacts . it does make a fast and solid connection and is easy to use. Used to use it myself whenever we had to assemble or repair connectors for automatic stepping cable testing equipment.
Quote from: CNE Runner on September 16, 2008, 05:53:38 PM
While we are at it: in my opinion it is not advisable to solder turnouts. These are mechanical devices and, friend, they will need replacement. All my turnouts (Peco) are held in place with rail joiners for easy replacement. BTW I have already had to replace one unit...slide back the joiners and pull out the turnout...easy.
I am surprised to hear about having to replace turnouts. I have had turnouts that needed resoldering and turnouts that needed jumper wires installed to bypass failed internal jumpers, but both of these jobs were easily done with the turnouts in place. I suppose turnouts could eventually wear out, but checking on some that have been thrown more than half a million times each, I would say that it will take a few more millions of throws to wear them out. The only turnouts I ever remember removing were some Shinohara ones that I modified to make more DCC friendly with long steam locomotives, and I put those back in the same places they came from. They were a little harder to remove, having been soldered in place. But not much harder.
I just used an Atlas hobby saw to cut through the joiners at the track joints. Then I soaked the ballast with warm water to release the glue. Next I lifted out the turnout, modified it, and removed the half dozen half joiners with a soldering iron and a rag. The soldering iron was to melt the solder; the rag was to pull off the half joiner without burning my fingers and at the same time wipe off any excess solder. With soldering iron and rag still in hand, I removed the half joiners from the ends of the rails. Occasionally this left a bit of solder on the underside of the foot of the rail but a few strokes with a file quickly removed that.
The biggest problem was cutting slots far enough into the tracks to completely slide the new joiners out of the way. The Atlas hobby saw has too wide a back to be much use here. I eventually came up with two solutions - one was to break all the plastic off a spare hobby saw and make a new handle out of a piece of dowel epoxied to one side of the blade. Then the other side of the blade can go right down to the roadbed if need be. These modified saws work best if made in pairs - one left hand and one right hand. The other solution was to use a 1/4" wide metal cutting blade, the kind meant for use in a fret saw frame. These are a little thicker than the Atlas hobby saw, so they are no good for cutting the joiners, but they can be used, either with or without a frame, to cut the tops off some ties for clearance under the rails.
With the rail ends under cut, it was easy to slide on six new rail joiners, pushing them back far enough to clear the ends of the rails. It was then possible to drop in the turnout. Once the joiners were slide forward to span the rail joints, they were soldered in place once again. The gaps left by the Atlas hobby saw were about 1/32" wide and caused no problems whatsoever.
I know all of this sounds long and complicated. But it is what you have to do if your track and turnouts are glued down and ballasted. The only additional steps if you have soldered rail joiners is cutting them with a hobby saw and pulling off the half length pieces.