flex track

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

new guy to hobby iam starting to lay track going to use atlas flex truck do you solder all the track, straight and curves at one time or on curves cut the long leg then solder?? buy the way i will be laying it on blue board with cork roadbed Thanks Jim

2

If your layout room has great variations in temperature, I would not solder the track. I have an indoor layout and I run DCC. I make sure that each track either has a feeder wire soldered to it or is soldered to another track that has a feeder wire attached.

3

Hello Goatman,

You’re going to want to solder the rail joints where the flextrack sections form a curve. Otherwise you’ll end up with joints that are out of alignment, and that will cause frustrating derailments.

Here are a couple articles on this site you can read and download:

“Laying flextrack on curves” –http://www.trains.com/Content/Dynamic/Articles/000/000/000/109pkaus.asp

and

“Laying flextrack without putting a kink in your plans” – http://www.trains.com/Content/Dynamic/Articles/000/000/000/110kfhum.asp

These articles will answer many questions other questions you might have about laying flextrack.
Use a small dab of rosin soldering flux on each joint and make sure the tip of your soldering iron is clean and shiny.

As for laying the track on cork roadbed atop extruded foam board, you’ll have better results if you glue, rather than tack or nail, the track to the cork. I prefer to use a thin coat of Walther’s Goo; other modelers like to spread a thin (1/16") coat of Liquid Nails for Projects (the water-soluable type) on the cork roadbed (this adhesive also works well for gluing the cork to the foam).

Hope this helps,

Paul Schmidt
Contributing Editor
Trains.com

4

I use WOODLAND SCENICS “FOAM TACK GLUE” for gluing the track to the rodbed. This stuff is great! You can pull the track up after the glue has dried, and it leaves little or no residue. In answer to your question, yes, you do cut the long rail and then solder.

5

I live in Florida and use dual cab, Atlas flex-track + cork roadbed. I soldered all my track joints and have not encountered any expansion/shrinkage problems. We have a large humidity range here from summer to winter and our railroad is in an un-airconditioned garage.

The one place problems appeared was at the one joint where I forgot to solder the joiners. This oversight immediately showed up as an electrical continuity problem.

Soldering for dependable electrical connections is not just a good idea. It’s mandatory. Rail joiners are only useful for rail alignment. In my experience they are useless for electrical continuity.

If you’re using DCC, do what the DCCers say and solder feeders to each rail. Otherwise either solder all joints or solder 22 AWG solid wire jumpers between the rails where rail joiners occur.

Glueing vs. tacking.

  1. Are you superelevating your curves or think you might want to go back and do this? Then tack. Just drill a small hole through the pre-drilled Atlas tie hole with a Dremel bit a size smaller than the rail tacks. Then push it in with your finger plus tool assist if necessary.

  2. Ballast plus the adhesive (matte medium, diluted white glue) is what will fix the track in place relative to the cork roadbed. After this is done there won’t be any margin for expansion/shrinkage anyway.

6

Jim new guy, sorry i haven’t answer sooner . but thanks for the imformation waiting for my track order let you all know how things go latter thanks goatman