When I finaly start my layout I think adding feeders to the track is the way to go for relaiblity
Has any one tried drilling strait through the track for the feed wire,top to bottom and then clean rail, would this work?
Certainly. You can either solder directly to the rails or to a rail joiner. I use heat sinks to minimize the chance of melting ties and brush some flux on the joint to aid flow.
Drilling a hole thru the track is tedious work and then you still need to solder it, For reliability.
Recommended Buss wires are 12-14 gauge copper, and feeders can be fractional equivalents.
28 AWG is fine if short enough and plentiful. I use 24 AWG solid for feeders every 3 feet or (40 " for Shinohara made flex’. Each has a feeder. I don’t solder turnouts, but use new rail joiners on he point ends, if not all .
You will need to Solder , so buy a soldering gun @ Home Depotand some non-acid ‘flux’ and some 'Resin core solder.
IF you don’t wish to learn soldering, buy Kato’s ‘Uni-Track’ .
Thats pretty much what i did on my last layout, wired for DCC. Just got house type wire from Home Depot and used it as 14 ga bus afater stripping it from the outer sheathing. Then used the suitcase connectors to run 18-20 ga solid strand wire up to the track as feeders. Drilling holes is anything but tedius. All you need is a standard drill - drill a hole on the outside of each rail and run the feeder up through it and solder to the out side or the rail (near the joint/joiner to not be next to plastic ties). That about sums it up.
I’ve had good luck with solder only - no drilling. I use 22 gauge (I think) stranded wire. “Tin” it with solder and bend the last 1/8th inch 90 degrees. Cut the plastic away between two ties, clean the underside of the rail with some fine sandpaper or a jewelers file, and solder the bent portion to the underside of the rail. You will need a medium sized tip on a hot soldering iron, and a little practice. I use a temperature controlled 24W Ungar soldering station set to about 650 degrees for track soldering (HO).
Jim
I solder a wire drop to each piece of rail not to rail joiners. The rail joiners are not always a sure way to tranfer power. My drops end the problem. I use #12 wire for a bus.
Dave
For my layout I have to use a long bit. 3/4" treated plywood with 2 1/2" of white bead board on top of that, so drilling down through the EZ Track is not an option. I just drill down next to the plastic roadbed. It works for me.
I may be reading this wrong, but drilling down through the rail is going to be next to impossible to do without a drill press and vise. Even then you will most likely break many bits. Also you will be drilling away the web of the rail. My advice is solder feeder wire to outside or bottom of rail or to rail joiners. Ken
I use 12 ga bus wires with paired 20 ga thermostat wire drops every 3 feet. I make a little dogleg in the drop and solder it along the edge of the flange. I connect the drops to the bus with suitcase connectors, over 2 years of travelling my Free-mo modules to shows and no connection problems to date!(knock wood) I picked up a remnant spool of the thermostat wire at local hardware and I think it is a lifetime supply! jc5729 John Colley, Port Townsend, WA
Just curious, if you don’t drill, how do you hide the wires? I thought the point of drilling a hole is to get the wire from the surface of the layout where it provides power to the track, to underneath were it attaches to the power bus.
Sorry, it sounded like the original question was about drilling through the rail itself, presumably to make a place to hook a wire. I drill holes down through the bench directly below the rail. The wire is soldered to the underside of the rail and is dropped down through the hole in the benchwork to attach to a bus underneath.
Jim
Yeah, drilling thru the rail itself never made any sense, but it could have been what the OP was asking about. I’ve never heard of it done or even dreamed of it being necessary. I mean, why when you can solder the wire to the side. But I guess if someone is trying to get out of soldering, that might be something someone would dream up. But you would really have to drill two holes so you could loop the wire through and tie it off. I can’t honestly say I’ve ever seen this done in my entire life.
Jiim
Here is a link to a thread I ran about a year ago that showed exactly how I did it. This works great for me. Hope it helps.
http://www.trains.com/TRC/CS/forums/1006413/ShowPost.aspx
Ron
Link isn’t showing?
WHY? Still have to solder, plus adds a ‘bump’ to top of rail.
Sorry, I blew it somewhere. It is showing now. I’ll list it here too.
http://www.trains.com/TRC/CS/forums/1006413/ShowPost.aspx
Ron
Seems to me like an awful lot of discussion just to decide how to solder two wires to the track: drill a small hole beside each rail, drop a wire through each, hook-up the bottom ends to the power source and solder the top ends to the side of the rail. Ba-da-boom, ba-da-bing: you’re done. [swg] Well, not quite: this method works best if you solder at all of the railjoiners, too. [:D]
Wayne
I leave just enough bared wire above the tie that it can be bent at a curved 90 degrees so that the apex of the curve lies against the web of the rail and on the foot at the same time. This is a small bit of wire perhaps 3/16"-1/4" long. Once soldered to the rail (and I place it on the side of the rail away from likely visual reference points, including for a camera…often that’s just on the far side of the rails), and once it is all painted up and weathered, you have to look closely to see the feeders on my layout.
No drilling.
I have always tinned the wire, bent it 90 degrees, and soldered it to the bottom of the rail. This does however make track laying a lot more work, because of carefully having to mark where to drill the holes in the road bed and where to solder the feeder wires so it all matches up. The end result though is that you can’t see the wires, especially after you ballast.