I am done with most of my track laying on my layout. I was thinking about painting my track. On the last layout, I painted my track and I had problems and learned many lessons. My question is has anybody ever painted their track, rails and all, without soldering the rail joints? I am not too crazy about handling a soldering iron again and since I have a switching layout I do not want to slip and melt the ties of the turnouts, big $$$$ with the curved ones. For the record I have code 83 rail.
You will need to solder feeder wires to make sure everything gets power. Rule of thumb is about every 6’ with flex track. If you paint unsoldered rail joiners, your going to have problems. Most people remove a couple ties at the joints so they don’t melt. Solder the rail joiners and then slide the ties back under the track. Not much help if your tracks already down.
Paint and unsoldered joints? That adds up to P-R-O-B-L-E-M-S. How do I know? Been there and done that. I built a layout with no soldered joints one time. I then painted the track and it looked really good and the trains ran well, for a little while. The paint had gotten into the joiners and was now acting as an insulator. I ended up having to solder EVERY joint so that the solder bridged the joiners. BTW, I was using sectional track. On flex track you can run feeders to each peice of track. I’ve done this on sectional track before and it was easier to just solder the joints instead of having to drill all those holes. I have my current layout (sectional track) laid out in 16 blocks with one pair of feeder wires going to each block and all rail joints in the block are soldered.
I’ve had great success with soldering two pieces of flex together (on the workbench), then installing with no other solder joints. But there’s a feeder for every 6-foot section of soldered flex and for every other piece of rail.
Overkill? Yes, probably, but one heck of a lot easier than trying to resolder bad joints and/or add feeders later. As Mr. Murphy (the optimist), will tell you, such problems are often not too hard to fix, except that they’re invariably in the most inaccessible places.
You’re right about the difficulty of soldering track that’s already down. It may seem ok for a while, but most likely the joints won’t be either as strong mechanically or solid electrically (melted ties or not), and eventually will start giving trouble.
So your best bet is, feeders, feeders, feeders. Do it now or do it later!
I’m not trying to sound arrogant here, but if you want some semblance of reliablility, I don’t think you have much choice in the matter, You can solder the in place track, no problem, just don’t solder more than 6-8 feet of it into one section or you’ll have some buckling when temperature changes happen. You need some gap to allow for the expansion. Like others have said, feeders to the track no closer than 6’. Every soldered section must have a feeder. A week or so ago, Texas Zepher posted his club’s horror story of too many feeders. Very easy to get wires crossed under the dark table, organize the wiring carefully and use color coded wire. I use Red and white 20 gauge feeders to a 16 gauge DCC bus.
Soldering is an art, you get better with practice. If you are burning ties, you probably have too small an iron or you are no keeping the tip properly tinned. You should have a wet sponge by your soldering iron at all times to keep the tip clean and properly tinned.
Unlike some, I use an old 65 watt pro weller and never have tie damage. Practice getting in and getting out quickly. You should not have to hold the iron on the rail for more than 5 seconds if that long. Little irons take so long to heat the rail they soften and melt the ties in the process. Get some old pieces of track, some 20 gauge wire and solder 20 feeders on
Agree with Pondini here. I’ve been laying track for the past several months and initially put feeders in only where absolutely needed to get a train running and test track etc.
My yard tracks have been laid for several weeks with only a few strategically placed feeders and most track getting power from the joiner connections. The other day, trains started stalling at places they ran just fine for weeks. Seems the joiners, probably with expansion/contraction and trains rolling over them, “loose their grip” and then you get intermittent power.
So, now it is time for me to start putting in the feeders permanently - before painting etc.
WHEN you decide to solder your track, make sure you leave some unsoldered gaps for expansion as mentioned above. You’ll regret it if you don’t. TRUST ME!
I’d say YES, but not so much for expansion/contraction (although you need to do that somewhere), but for maintenance. If you ever need to remove a turnout, it will be much harder if it’s soldered. And even harder to install a replacement, as you’ll probably leave some solder in the joiners when you un-solder them.
If you leave the joiners on the turnouts unsoldered, solder jumpers around them. This assures good contact yet leaves the joiners free to move if you need to replace the turnout at some point.