I was getting ready to wire my track and in all honesty I suck massively at soldering wire. How do you guys wire your layout, and is there anyway I can get around soldering?
Without soldering, what you have is a bunch of electrical mechanical connections…a recipe for frustration.
I suggest buying a good soldering iron (a soldering station is a great idea, and around 100 dollars and it allows you to vary the heat…a plug in pensil type of iron only has one temperature setting) and practice. Really, soldering isnt that hard.
You need 3 things for a good solder joint…1) Heat, 2)Clean contacts and 3) Solder. Thats it.
Clean your soldering tip (a paper towel role works well)
Clean your joint (clean with fine grit sandpaper)
Heat your joint and add Solder (adding flux to the joint will promote quick heat transfer from the tip of the iron to the joint and will allow the solder to wick where you put the flux).
Once soldering is learned, then it opens up other avenues to our hobby.
David B
Not really. Somehow, someway, you need to secure the feeder wires to the rails, and you need to secure the feeder wires to the bus wires.
What kind of soldering iron do you have and how many watts?
Soldering is not exactly rocket science. A little practice nearly makes perfect.
I don’t solder my feeder wires to the bus wires. I merely strip a little of the insulation off the bus wires and wrapped the stranded copper feeder wire around the exposed bus wire a few time.
But, I do solder the feeder wire to the bottom of rail joiner. I turn the rail joiner upside down and place the solder wire on top of the underside of the rail joiner, then apply heat from the tip of the soldering iron. The heat quickly melts the solder and it spreads over the underside of the rail joiner firmly securing the wire on the underside of the rail joiner.
Try it. It is not a big deal.
Rich
I mostly use “suitcase” and crimp connectors under the layout, although I do solder when and wherever appropriate, such as soldering feeders to the rail, and the rail joints themselves.
You can get around soldering feeders by using terminal tracks or wired rail joiners, but the rail to rail joints are going to be a problem from an electrical standpoint.
I’d suggest practicing on scrap rail/wire/etc until you get to a reasonable skill level. There really aren’t any tricks or secrets. All it takes are clean materials, sufficient heat, and the correct solder for the job at hand.
Either that, or get to be good friends with someone who likes to solder. [;)]
I guess it depends on how big the layout is. Several companies make rail joiners with wires already attached to them.
Well, Yes and no.
Just remember that like “loose lips sink ships”, “loose connections sink locos” or something to that effect.
Atlas makes rail joiners with wire feeds on them:
Code 83:
http://www.wholesaletrains.com/Detail.asp?Scale=HO&Item=150TRACK83&offset=25&ID=20014771
Code 100:
http://www.wholesaletrains.com/Detail.asp?Scale=HO&Item=150TRACK100&offset=50&ID=20012095
That will eliminate the soldering of rail joiners and/or soldering feeder wires to the rail itself.
BUT: you will have to most likely solder the feeder wires to the bus wire for your DCC. YOU COULD , I guess, just strip and wrap the end of the feeder wire around the bus wire really well to make a good connection.
Juat remember that soldered connections are better than that. ANd soldering really isn’t that hard. Practice on spare pieces of sectional track until you feel you know what you are doing.
[8-|]
There are a few skills that just about every model railroader needs. Soldering is one of them. I still don’t particularly like it, but I’d have to admit that my skills have improved greatly, just with the practice of doing it so much for track, locomotive and structure wiring.
When I picked the hobby back up some years back, I had the same “I can’t do that” attitude. I started with Hydrocal castings, and discovered “Hey, I can do that!” I installed a simple decoder, built a craftsman kit and learned to pour Envirotex water. Modeling has taught me something about old dogs and new tricks.
Mister Beasley, I have to agree with you wholeheartedly.
I have even reached the point where I like to solder. Once you get the hang of it, it is pretty cool to be able to do competent soldering work.
And, as you say, the same for castings and landscape shapings, installing decoders, working with electronics for wiring and signals, pouring “realistic water”, ground cover and ballasting, and a whole host of other model railroading activities including scratch building and kit bashing.
if you are serious about model railroading, you need to try these things, achieve some minimal level of competence, gain control of these technical aspects of the hobby.
Rich
You’ll quickly go broke buying the Atlas terminal joiners. For the price of one pair of terminal joienrs you cna buy a pack of 48 regular joiners and solder your own wires on. It REALLY pays to learn how to solder.If you can build kits above the skill level of a Blue Box kit, you can definitely solder.
This is actually how I wire my layout - every joiner has power feeds to it, except where I use insulated joienrs between power districts. That means tuenouts have 3 sets of feeders. Even a short fitter section of track gets power joiners on either end. This is the second layout I’m building this way, and both have held up through rail painting and ballasting with no loss of power. I don;t even have all the feeders hooked up as of yet, and it’s been over 2 weeks since I’ve run any trains, but if I go turn on the power, it will run just fine, no track cleanign first.
The drops from these joiners are wrapped and soldered to a #14 standed bus run along underneath. Here, the proper tools help. A stripper like the Ideal Stripmaster will quickly and easily strip wire int he middle of a run, leaving a bare spot to wrap the stripped end of the feeder around. This is not like the cheap v-jaw strippers, or that seen on TV stripper that goes with the (practically worthless) cold heat soldering iron. And since this is heavy gauge wire, a low power pencil soldering iron won’t do, you need a heavy duty gun, 150 watts or so. The strip tool is the key to makign it easy to make the mechanical part of the connection. The soldering gun is the key to makign it easy to secure the connection with solder.
–Randy
One difficulty with the Atlas terminal joiners is that the wires are all black, so you really have to be careful not to reverse polarities when connecting them between the rails and the bus wires.
When I solder my feeder wires to the underside of the rail joiners, I use blue and yellow feeder wires and blue and yellow bus wires, so that I am sure to match them up with the correct polarities.
Rich
I use red and white to the same effect, mainly because the #20 solid I use for the feeders is sold as a loosely twisted pair of those colors, intended as alarm wire or something. I got it at Home Depot, and just grabbed spools of the heavier stranded wire to match.
Unless you have a really tiny layout, it’s worth it to get the spools, you always need more wire than you think you do, and the 500 foot spool is not even twice the price of the 100 foot spools - so as soon as you go over 100 feet, you’ve actually saved money. My layout is about 10x12 and I’ve already used over 100 feet of my bus wire and I still have an 8 foot long penninsula to build.
–Randy
The only place I solder is at the track. All other connections are made with crimp on connectors and terminal strips.
Nice work, Dave.
Crandell
I’ll second that !
Rich
Thank you.
The boards are hinged at the top and swing up out of sight unless I need to work on them.