I’m in the process of building a layout and will be using nickle silver track. I have alot of old brass sectional track lying around and am wondering if I can canabalize it for the rail joiners. I will be soldering all of the joints.
Should I worry about future problems from using the brass joiners?
Great forum by the way…
Thanks in advance for the advice
Bob
You certainly can use them since you are soldering all of the joints, but two different dissimilar metals can cause corrosion around the joint areas and problems that you might not want a few years in the future.
We see dissimilar metal corrosion doing all kinds of strange things in outside weather conditions, but it might not happen so quickly in a trains room.
Here is my two cents… buy new ones. Brass ones will work, but new nickel silver ones will probably be the cheapest thing you ever buy for your layout! Unless your hobby shop is closed for the night, or not open on Sundays… just go out and get some.
The rail joiners on sectional track are crimped making them difficult to remove and re-install. Brass on NS track is not the best way to go. Saving a few pennies now will cost you dollars and time later on.
Thanks all,
just my inherent cheapnesss coming out.
I will hold off and go and buy some proper joiners afterall.
Being the cheapskate that I am, I’ve used the brass joiners with NS rail. When I soldered the joint, I made sure the ends butted and my solder bridged the rail ends. Soldering on the outside of the rail it really made no difference if the joiner got soldered or not. It simply held the rail in position for soldering. In a pinch, I have soldered rails together without a joiner.
Electricity passing through a joint of two dissimilar metals causes a chemical reaction known as electrolysis that can quickly eat away at both metals. Depending on how often and how long per session you run trains, electrolysis can cause the rail joints to come apart even if they are soldered. Buy nickel silver rail joiners for nickel silver rail and throw the brass away if you plan on using this layout for the long term.
If you ever switch over to DCC control, which keeps a constant voltage on the track, the electrolysis effect will increase drastically.
http://www.answers.com/topic/nickel-silver
http://www.moonraker.com.au/techni/electrol.htm
Interesting Reading
One of my rules I’ve adopted through years of model railroading is:
Never re-use railjoiners.
Two people have said this, and it is true but not a problem in this instance. This is because metalurgically nickel-silver track is in the generic sense also brass. So one is mixing two minor variaions of the same metal (copper-zinc). There was a very long thread about this over in the “general discussion” about a year ago. I can’t find it but I did find this:
http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?page=1&TOPIC_ID=45741
Also I have been mixing these two types of track for about 30 years with no problems.
hmm… i’ve never seen crimped rail joiners on the track… mine always fell off, resulting in a trip to the LHS to get more…