Hey, i was just wondering if anyone uses an idea that I thought of the other day. I was looking at the Atlas track feeder rail joiners, and how big and ugly they are, and I got an idea: Why not take a railjoiner and pre-solder feeder wires to it? That way they are already made, and you could make them look as inconspicuous as possible.
I was thinking of soldering a wire to one side of a railjoiner, so that the wire was parallel with it, and then could be just bent straight downward to form a right angle with the rail joiner.
Ummm…I may be missing something here. Atlas makes railjoiners with wires already soldered to them, both code 83 and code 100. Is that what you’re referring to in “track feeder rail joiners”?? They’re just regular Atlas railjoiners with wires soldered to them, so shouldn’t look any worse than any other railjoiners??
For a permanent layout I prefer to solder the feeders to the side of the rail. Once the rail is painted and weathered they are quite inconspicuous. I am not real fond of relying on a press fit rail joiner for electrical continuity.
I was thinking of doing this so that I could maybe save a step when soldering rail together on curves, or do you think it would just be easier to connect the rails with the rail joiners, and then hold a feeder wire in place and solder them together as one unit?
Yes. That’s the way to do it. When you solder your joint, the wire would have a tendency to come off. Easier just to do it all at the same time. 20/22 gauge wire is good to use for feeders.
Make sure to solder your wires to OUTSIDE of the rail so they don’t interfere with your wheel flanges. Cut away a couple of plastic ties on each side of the joint so they don’t melt. These can be glued back in place later. Use a higher wattage iron so you can do the joint quickly. (45 watts or so)
I make up batches of these things. Sometimes I end up soldering the track, too, sometimes not.
I do half with red wire and half with black so they’re easier to connect to the proper bus beneath the layout.
I use wire that’s a bit heavier than Atlas uses.
I mount the wire perpendicular to the rail joiner, at the midpoint. That way it doesn’t form a ridge which would interfere with slipping ties underneath after installing flex track.
I was thinking. Since our track is fastened in place and we intend to solder the rail joints anyway…why even use rail joiners? Why not use a piece of 22-26 ga. copper wire laid along the base of each rail prior to soldering the joint instead of a bulky joiner? For that matter would we even need the little bit of copper wire at most joints or could we simply let the solder flow along the two pieces of rail to span the joint? I could be done as easily as when soldering feeders only use bare copper and nip off the excess. Once the track was weathered and ballasted I doubt you would be able to see anything. Just thinking out loud. Any reasons why this would not work?
Soldering feeders to rail joiners does not amount to good electrical contact.
If you use 3’ sections solder a #20 AWG feeder to the center of each section. I solder it cross ways so the feeder sticks out to the sides. After laying the section down, drill a small hole on each side down thru the base to connect to the bus. I use a utilitie knife and cut a smal channel for the feeder to the hole. After ballasting you don’t see it.
For reasons of expansion/contraction, I only solder joinres on curves, staggard, to prevent kinks. Some times I may, for adding a turnout etc., cut a piece of the section, to make room for the turnout. Then I may add the piece I cut out to the other side. I will perhaps solder it to the turnouts with a bridge wire to the stock rails. In other words you want a feeder for each piece of track between un-soldered rail joiners. That way your not depending on joiners for electrical integrity. Joiners are notorious for building up resistance over time. I pre-solder 12+ 3’ sections with feeders at a time. It makes it so much easyier than soldering feeders after the rail is down.
[%-)][%-)][%-)] Your gonna cut them on flex track anyhow. When you bend your soldered flex track around a curve, the ties are going to catch on your soldered joiners.
(and yes, I DO know how to properly solder)
I use Kato Unitrack and cheat a little bit by buying thier 9 inch feeder section and marking the blue side rail and the white side rail depending on which wire goes to which rail.
I cannot offer you much help on atlas, I used to get the humming 1000 gigavolt weller with it’s bright lights and big solder and melt ties to get it on the rail. I finally got the fumes somewhere in my brain a little too long lol.
I miss the reassuring growl it made as it pulled on the utility company, spinning down some of the lights and other big appliances.
I do it a bit differently from the others, it seems. I do run the bared, bent, tip of copper feeder inside the rails, and make it lie tight against the corner between the rail web and the foot. I only do it this way to hide the feeder behind the rail closest to the operator. For the far of the paired rails, I solder the feeder to their outsides, also hidden thereby.
If/once a joiner gets to be giving me problems, I solder it. That fixes 'em.
I solder my feeders to the under side of the rails, bent at a 90 degree angle so the feeders descend through the benchwork straight down underneath the rail. After ballasting, they are invisible. I solder track joiners between rail sections that share a feeder. My soldering iron is a 24 watt temperature controlled Ungar. For (HO) trackwork, I bump the temperature up a bit. I have yet to melt any Atlas ties unless I accidently touch the iron directly to the tie.
Pick up your roll of solder. Pull out a small section. Bend it back and forth a couple of times.
Now why would you expect that to be strong enough to be the mechanical connection of your rails. Solder is just for electrical continuity. It should be applied after you have a good mechanical connection.
The Atlas joiners have a little lip of metal for the wire, so in a sense they are not just a rail joiner with a wire soldered to them It is a delicate joint and several of mine have broken, so they almost need strengthening with some solder anyway. I might add however that a little work with a Floquil/Testors weathering stick of rail brown makes the joiner and bit of wire inconspicuous once installed, so there are ways to address the appearance.
The idea of wiring a lead to a rail joiner is, agreed, NOT the best for electrical conductivity but the pre-wired joiner let me add an additional feeder in some otherwise fairly inaccessible areas where I did not want to be messing with my soldering iron or gun on-site. They have their uses.
Ok. No need to be condescending in your reply. [:I]
Since, as many have said, rail joiners loosen. They can’t be called a “good” mechanical connection.
If you are not getting a strong mechanical connection with solder you must be making cold solder joints.
When was the last time you grabbed your track, which is fastened to a table and bent it back and forth?
In my experience when solder joints fail it is typically NOT the solder that failed. Rather it is the wire or other metal tab etc. that the wire is soldered to that fails. I’ll refer you to dknelsons post above.