Everyone has differing opinions on this one. I’m pulling my hair out with all the conflicting answers I am getting. I am close to starting to lay my track. I have 150 ft. of shinohara code 83 track. Should I use shinohara/Walthers joiners or will any brand do the job? I will talley the votes at the end of the week before I visit my local hobby shop.
Yes, use the Walthers/Shinohara Code 83 joiners. They will go on very snug and aren’t very visible once installed.
Don Z.
Any brand of joiners will work, as long as they’re for code 83 rail. I’m not sure but I think the standard code 100 joiners sit up a little higher. Of course I could be wrong. You may not want to do it, but I solder all my rail joiners in place.
I have been mixing Atlas and Shinohara flex, code 100 and code 83, with wild abandon, joining it with everything from Atlas ‘universal’ joiners to joiners salvaged from truly ancient brass snap-track. Except for shimming under the smaller-coded rail at transition joints (for vertical alignment purposes) I haven’t done anything special.
HOWEVER… I don’t expect rail joiners to carry track power. Those rails which don’t have their very own feeders are connected to the rails that do by jumpers around the uninsulated rail joiners. The only thing I expect the joiners to do is keep the rails in horizontal and vertical alignment, with the aid of shims where needed.
My advice? Use whatever you have on hand! At the LHS, buy the standard brand that gives the most bang for the buck. When installing, be prepared to shim as necessary to secure proper alignment, and knock the sharp corner off the railhead on the inside of every joint. That last item will probably do more to eliminate derailments than anything else you might do.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
I agree with Jeffrey: whichever rail joiners you choose, solder them in place. The joiner is to mechanically join the sections of track, the solder is to electrically join them.
Wayne
When I was much younger (I’m 42 & been modeling 35 years) I bought some joiners than didn’t curl around & fit the base of the rail, but came up on the side of the rail causing derailment of some of my equipment (which had the cookie cutter flanges). When I went to DCC I started to solder 2 pieces of flex together with a feeder soldered to the bottom & ran down through a hole in the base to my power bus. Where these 6’ sections joined I solder the rail joiner to 1 side, left a gap about the width of a business card for expansion, & soldered a small guage jumper wire across the gap & over the end of the rail joiner to the ajoining rail. With this method the choice of rail joiner doesn’t matter as long as it only fits the rail base & holds the rails in good alignment. BTW the joiners I spoke of that caused derailments where made in the days of brass track & I haven’t seen any like those in a while.
The only problem I encountered when I built an HO scale home layout intermixing Peco, Walthers/Shinohara, and Atlas code 83 track components was with the Peco track having a narrower foot than Atlas or Walthers, and Peco rail joiners being too narrow to fit onto other brands of track.
My solution was to use Peco rail joiners for Peco-to-Peco track, and Atlas rail joiners squeezed slightly shut on one end when joining Peco to the other brands.
I use Atlas N gauge joiners on their HO track and solder them. It’s a bit of work to get them on, but you can hardly see them when your done.
I do rely on joiners to transmit power between segments of track. But, the lesson is getting through to me, one failed join at a time. Hey, it takes time for me to get the idea!
I buy joiners…doesn’t matter what type they are, as long as they are HO and I can actually pay for them. When I get them home, I find that some do better than others. Some work well forever, it seems, while others fail within a week or two of placing them, always after I have weathered the track and ballast. Often, all it takes is placing a sharp metal instrument against one end of the joiner, sliding it left, then back to centre, and that almost always takes care of the problem…for now.
I think part of my learning will be that they are meant mostly for alignment, and secondarily for power. I agree at this point in my learning that most of us who keep a layout for more than a couple of years will find themselves going back and doing it properly, by soldering them into place or by soldering jumpers around them.
More succinctly, the joiners can be mismatched, but do not expect them to perform electrically well across the board.
Any code 83 jioner should work…I favor Atlas C83 joiners.As far as soldering every joiner I feel there is no real need since you will be dropping feeder wires every few feet…None of the clubs I am a member of solder the rail joiners and we have had no problems…
Not all atlas joiners are equal, some will be tight and others a loose fit. If i find one that slides on too easy, I use it in a sodered joint and use the tight ones fot connecting turnouts of which I never soder. …John
I’ll throw in the other side of the debate here since I plan on doing joiners the “other” way–i.e. not soldering joiners on straight track, and only soldering curves. The idea here is to better allow for track expansion/contraction (more accurately, wood expansion/contraction under the track). As there are fairly significant humidity/temparature changes here in Ohio, this can be a concern. Having said that, many reccommend as Wayne does, i.e. solder every section and seem to have no problem. An advantage of that method is that then one doesn’t have to drop a feeder to every section of flextrack.
Jim
I’ll be the contrarian and suggest not using rail joiners at all - with the proviso that I have not tried this with Shinohara flex track. As has been pointed out, rail joiners do a poor job over the long term of linking rail electrically. So the ideal is to provide another path to feed each rail electrically.
IMHO, rail joiners also do a poor job of aligning rail mechanically. Why the recommendation to solder rail joints on curves? Because the spring of Atlas flex track will cause a kink at the rail joint on a curve held together by a rail joiner only.
With handlaid track and ME flex track (and any other flex track that will hold a curve once bent), the answer is to pre-bend the rail or track to the desired curve. Both of these will hold their curve, and the normal spikes/glue or solder will hold the entire piece of rail/track in place with the joint aligning just fine. The rail joiner adds nothing to the picture, except an exercise in notching/sanding/fixing ties so that there is no vertical bump. Note, since I have not worked with Shinohara flex, I don’t know whether it is stiff enough to hold a pre-bent curve.
Atlas flex track, with its infamous “spring”, will not hold its alignment on a curve with my methods. The only way to ensure well-aligned joints on curves over the long term with Atlas flex track is to use soldered rail joiners (IMHO).
my thoughts and experiences
Fred W
I can only speak from my own experience, but I’ve never had any apparent problem with expansion/contraction of either the benchwork or the track, and the climate here in Southern Ontario is not exactly dry. My layout is an around-the-walls type in its own room of about 560 sq. ft. The layout is point-to-point-to-point (partially double-decked), with provision for run-through operation for casual visitors. The room is in the basement, well-insulated but unheated. All of the track is soldered together at the rail joiners, including turnouts, and there is no bus wire. All of the track, and most of the turnouts are Atlas, and I run steam and diesel, with DC control, via either an MRC Controlmaster 20 with walkaround, or walkaround SCR throttles. There are electrical gaps where required (passing sidings, staging, etc.) but the railroad is currently operated as a single block. When the second level is completed, I may divide the layout into blocks to support two operators. I run a mix of freight and passenger equipment, most with plastic wheels and I do not clean track except after ballasting or scenery work near the track.
Wayne
To answer your question directly:
Different manufacturer’s rail comes with different thicknesses. ONLY the height is to NMRA, therefor using the same manufacturer’ joiners is a good idea, if not absolute.
Metal rail joiners are intended to hold rail ends in alignmement, but since they are only a friction fit, can contaminate and loosen with age. Soldering thin copper jumpers at frequent intervals, gives more reliability.
HOW frequent and thin is open to conjecture. Opinions vary from person to person and experiences.
FACT is nickel silver track contains no Silver and does Oxidize. It also offers more electrical resistance than either brass or copper. (HOW MUCH is diectly related to length).
OPINION:Since todays DCC command signals go thrugh the track. HOW SAFE you are varies from person to person. For example I pretty much agree with F. Wright - I DON’T solder rail joiners (I had expansion) Some do. (I do use them primaily to align ends) and I use 20 gauge for track feeders (fits through solder eyelets), 24 gauge for LEDs and low current applications; all solid wire (but stranded) where flexing will occur); and 14 gauge solid BUSS wire (max run 24 feet).
THAT doesn’t mean someone else doesn’t have other ideas, or can do it better. No two people’s skills are exactly alike, nor opinions.
Each la
BATMAN, you have your answers. Any joiner will do, some better than others, and none will offer you any guarantees that they will be trouble free at every place you use them. If they won’t stall you too much, and if they are to be had soon, wait and use the W/S joiners to minimize your problems. Later, as you build confidence and skills, you will find that you can get by with most any kind, and then deal with failures by soldering jumpers around them…when you have to.
This is what we all do eventually. We try what seems intuitively to be best, and then troubleshoot and fix as we learn what the issues are. Your layout will require constant work over time, even if only to wipe the rail tops and vacuum up misplaced foam or dust here and there. Fiddling and altering and fixing is a fact of life. If you would like to minimize it to the extent possible, then don’t rely on joiners much and for long. Enjoy the ones that work for you unfailingly, and deal with the ones that let you down…which some will.
I use any joiner that comes to hand, no soldering, so far no problems - but I always make sure the joiners are tight. How? By pinching the CENTRE of the joiner with needle-nose pliers, just gently. This has 2 benefits - it doesn’t restrict the end of the joiner, so it still feeds onto the rail easily, and it tends to centre the joiner on the joint. This is very useful when joining 2 different track sizes, where the joiner wants to slide off-centre onto the thinner track flanges if it isn’t pinched in the centre.
I have seen too many people come to grief by soldering all of their joints. Many of them do this on curves to maintain the nice curve, however this is unnesesary if you use the first rule of laying track around a curve and that is that you never have your joints opposite each other. You should cut about eight inches from one track and then slide that piece out of the ties and dress up the end of the track that you are going to mate with it and slide it up to the cut section and using an exacto knife relieve the plastic to allow space for the joiner. This staggered joint was the first thing that I was shown when I started using flex track about 35 years ago.
Use the joiners to match the track especially Shinohara. This type of track is an excellent choice and the matching joiners are so good a fit that they are almost invisible especially when the rail is weathered.
Listen to the people that tell you to use droppers on ALL lengths of track especially when running DCC. Every book and DVD on DCC suggests that you should do this and it doesn’t really take much more time. Check out the DVDs of Joe Fugates Siskiyou line about wiring the layout to see just how easy it is.
So the short answer is - use the Shinohara joiners. I live in Australia and if I was to solder all of my joints I would end up with an unusable mess of track with temperatures going to around 110 degF and my budget doesn’t extend to air conditioning.
You probably already bought your joiners, but you’ll buy more. I’m mixing and matching track and joiners like many others, so I’ll share my experience, for what it’s worth.
On my first layout, in a garage in Ohio, I soldered all the joiners. When summer came, all the rail expanded and ripped some sections right off the roadbed. So I cut gaps, and when winter came they expanded so much the wheels dropped noticibly into the gaps. So what do do with joiners? And electrical? And gaps?
I now leave a file card thin gap in all joints, even on curves. This solves my expansion problem, as all the rail can move a little. I use foam for the subroadbed, so it doesn’t expand like wood or homosote. On long curves, I use Micro Engineering track. It holds its curve so soldering isn’t necessary. I use Micro Engineering joiners for these curves, as they are very tight. Track stays aligned. I use Atlas Code 83 track in all other places, for cost reasons, and I use Atlas joiners to join it and to join to the ME track. I am going to try pinching the joiners in the middle!! That is something new to me. I use masking tape to slowly shim the ME track to the level of the Atlas where possible. On occasion I solder a joint if I just can’t get the joiner to hold it in alignment.
When all is ballasted and painted, the joints and joiners become invisible. Even the large Atlas joiners practically disappear when you paint them. If someone is scanning your track to find the joiners, more power to 'em! I’m watching the trains!
Last, I solder feeders to every piece of track. When I can’t, like on a bridge, I depend on the joiners. They work fine for these short stretches. I use DCC, and have no problems.
Enjoy!
About pinching the joiners - I do it top and bottom, not from the sides. Just thought I’d better clarify that . . .
Woody.