I suspect this question has been answered more than once, maybe even twice. I had to rip up a curve due to derailments and uneveness. The road bed had shifted so did the track. At certain joints the wheels of passenger and large locomotives had a difficult time negotiating.
Crews have come in removed the old track and road bed. New road bed and ballast is being put down as we speak. The discussion with the engineers is, "Should we solder the curved portions of the flex track to stabilize the joints better.
Lotta people do solder flextrack joints on curves to keep the curvature uniform. I leave the straight jonts unsoldered to let the track cope with swelling and shrinking of the benchwork between heating season and summer.
I’ve taken to always soldering joints on curves, it just helps eliminate kinks and such. I generally solder two pieces together first, remove som ties to allow for the joint to slide, and curve the finished piece into place.
Well for starters how big of a curve are we talking about and why did your roadbed shift? I used to be one that soldered every rail on both sides, but now I have modified my method of madness to only solder the rail joiner it self on one side to allow for expansion and contraction, but this is only done on straight sections of track or reasonably close to straight. On curves I solder the track on both rails making it virtually one 6’ section of track, before I glue it in place on the roadbed. I have one long sweeping curve on the double track main line that had 4 sections of flex track soldered together and put in place as a single unit. I know this is a bit extreme but I had the help of two friends that night plus my 17 year old. I could have done it in two 6’ sections to be honest but it was just a case of hey we have the man power so lets give it a shot. Then we had the fun of doing it all over again for the second track.
You may possibly need to reevaluate you track laying methods, are you gluing the track down or just spiking it in place? How are you affixing the roadbed to the subroadbed or bench work etc. Are you calculating and drawing out your curves or are you just wining it? It’s been my experience that laying track is not very difficult but actually requires more planning and preparation then the actual physical work involved.
If possible, I arrange my track so that I won’t have a joint on a curve, even if that means using a short section of straight track where you could have used a continuous piece of flextrack. Of course, sometimes the curve itself is longer than 3 feet, so there’s nothing you can do about it.
Yes, by all means, solder the joints. Flex track wants to go back to being straight track, and those ends will kink if you don’t hold them in place. It’s easier to do it on your workbench, before you bend the track, which gives you effectively a 6-foot section of flex track. While you’re at it, you might want to solder feeder wires to the underside of the joiners.
Tough Love Department: It’s “solder,” not “soldier.” Sorry, but it just bugs me. Of course, it also bugs me that it’s not “sodder,” but that’s English for ya.
Drop that “i” out of solder, I thought from the title that you were considering enlisting.[(-D]
Seriously, though, a resounding YES for soldering curves to eliminate kinks and unevenness. I never used to do it, but I finally ripped up all of the flex track on curves and relaid it, soldering the joints together.
I tried the method of sliding the sliding rail into the receiving section next to it to a depth of maybe 6 ties, and it works really well. However, it still leaves the regular join back at the place where the two track lengths are butted. I would say that, unless you are willing to physically and painstakingly curve the last inch or two on each length of flex, you practically have to solider… er…soldier, whatever…the one joint.
Come to think of it, why not make both rails sliding rails. Then you could use the slip joint method all the time and save yourself the soldering. Most of us still feed each rail length anyway, so we could forget metal joiners altogether.
I solder all rail joints together, and usually do so as the track is put in place. For curves, I place the last section of soldered track temporarily in place on the curve, then trim the ends to make them roughly even when curved. After allowing this track to re-straighten itself, I solder another length of flex track onto it, adjusting the position of the rail ends as required. The previously-attached section of track is then spiked in place, and the whole procedure repeated.
I agree with you on the “tough love”, but I have a feeling that “sodder”, especially in Great Britain, would have an entirely different meaning. [:O][:-^]
The table framing is 1X3’s with 1/2 inch plywood, blue styrofoam is then applied as the sub roadbed. I use cork or topper tape as the road bed then the track is applied on top of that, then it is ballasted.
When I first applied the blue foam for some reason it ran at a very small angle down hill away from the curve. The curve itself is 32 ", plenty for my rolling stock. When the road bed was applied it wasn’t quite the way I wanted it so I have worked on this area several times trying to get elevated curves but I think the surface was uneven, I noticed a dip in one of the joints I had soldered and when certain engines and cars hit the dip of the track they went.
I have re-done the whole section with better laid road bed which gives better support, and I am not using pieces of styrene under the track to give it elevation. In other words I have build a better foundation and elevated the curve. It should work better. I have thought about soldering only the out side rail.
I solder all curves and straights that don’t have feeder wires attached. I am a firm believer in the “everything should be soldered to something” mantra as far as the electrical end of things go.
I even soldered a piece of track to a turnout as it kept gaping and was driving me nuts in a tricky spot on the layout. That was the only one though. The other forty or so turnouts are not soldered. Good Luck.
I solder every rail joint. I like the 2% silver solder for this because it seems stiffer/stronger. I suggest using heat sinks on both sides of the joint while soldering (you can get clip on heat sinks at Radio Shack). After soldering, I clean it up with a needle file so that there are no little lumps of solder to cause trouble later.
As far as curves go, I bend the flex track to approximate shape and then join/solder the rail ends. I try to stagger the joints a little (I think it sounds better - more like click-clack rather than THUNK-THUNK - and I think it reduces the likelihood of derailments).
I DON’T solder rail joints - ever - and have just had dramatic proof of why it would be a bad idea in my situation.
My layout space is a non-climate-controlled garage in the Dessicated Desert. Air temperature can exceed 120 degrees F in August, and drop below freezing in January. In general, I have left what I considered to be adequate rail gaps at every joint.
Turns out, some track I layed on a curve about 16 months ago (which I then buried under a temporary worktop) didn’t have adequate gaps. Fortunately, I wasn’t trying to operate over it. When I took the big sheet of 1.5 inch foam away I discovered that the caulked-down track had come adrift from the roadbed at every rail joint - forced sideways by rail expansion. Even at 90 degrees, the temperature today, those joints had NO gap! The two concentric curves, laid with adequate gaps, haven’t had any such problem.
So, after I lift the flex and make sure the roadbed surface is undamaged, I’ll be re-laying it - shifted over about 1mm at each rail joint.
Two things to note, before anyone brings up changing humidity or shifting forest products:
The only forest product I use is cookie-cut plywood, under the foam that actually supports the track. Everything else between rails and floor is steel.
The humidty here is consistent - consistently low. Anything in double digits is considered high humidity by local standards.
And a comment. As Crandell suggested, I carefully pre-bend every section of flex so it will hold the desired curvature without stress. The only possible stress to cause the problem I noted was lengthwise rail expansion.
Just to add to the complexity - I also never solder my rail joints. For conductivity, I´d rather add a feeder wire to each track, than to rely on those rail joiners, even if they get soldered to the rails.
Lesson: when your layout is subject to temperature extremes, one needs to consider the teperature at the time one is laying the track to determine the necessary gap between rail ends. The higher the temperature, the closer the gap and as well as the opposite.
Luckily, I’ve never been at the ugly end of temperature extremes as far as model railroad track is concerned.