Have a question for those of you who have soldered track joints and feeder wires. If I practice soldering using some old brass, sectional track are the charistics similar to nickel silver or are there significant differences between the two?
Thank you,
Brass rail is similar enough to nickel silver that I have occasionally used brass guard rails on my hand-laid specialwork. If anything, it’s fussier about proper preparation - you have to make sure any surface corrosion has been cleaned off.
OTOH, steel rail is absolutely useless as a soldering ‘learning aid.’ It does make good ‘scenery’ on spare rail racks or in open-top cars.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with lots of soldered-to-rail joints)
Yes. The old brass code 100 “snap track” pieces from Atlas are good for practicing and honing soldering skills.
You may have seen this before, but this short soldering video is one of my favorites:
Thanks for the replies.
I was hoping it was comparable enough for good pratice, as I have a bunch of it. Hadn’t thought of the box of steel that came from somewhere, sounds like in the box is a good place for it, until it becomes scenic details.
If the weather co-operates and doesn’t throw a thunder cloud between the satalite and the antenna, I’ll check out the video when I get back from the concert.
Thanks again.
Have fun,