I was talking to someone who solders his flextrack together without joiners. He soldered them so when laying curves the rails would slide through the ties from one section to the next without having the joiners get in the way. Being new at the flextrack game my question is, is this possible? Would it be strong enough? I just started talking to him in cosco in the tool section and found out he models HO. I wish now I had got his phone# as he got my interest up.
Brent
I too have heard of people doing this, though I’ve not personally seen it or done it. It is certainly possible and, if you do a good job soldering, it would certainly be strong enough. The trick is to keep the rails in alignment while being soldered. One would have to have some sort of clamp or small vice to hold the rails in alignment while you solder.
Ron
If you are considering “trying this at home”, I would recommend doing a test first–before committing to it for the whole railroad. First part of the test is to see if you can easily align the two rails before soldering and keep them so until you’re done. It does little good to have them soldered but mis-aligned (here’s one place the joiners help). Then you’ll want to see if the solder joint holds when you bend the rails to your minimum radius. I would think this method would be adequate for straight track, but I’m wary about the curves.
I’ve experimented with mechanical (as opposed to electrical) solder joints and have found that tin/lead joints can be pretty weak. In my particular case, I ended up using silver solder–it performed perfectly. I’ll note that this had nothing to do with track.
Ed
If you do try this be sure to put some gaps in the rail once your done to allow for expansion other wise you will end up with a lot of kinked track and broken rail joints.
I suspect that to get this to work you will need a harder solder. probably one that is %2 silver solder which you can still solder with a regular iron . With regular solder the joint will break quite easily if you bend the rail much. My friends and I try not to use joiners at all. We put feeder wires on every peice of flex track. It gives much better power distribution and is much more reliable. With rail joiners it’s not a matter of if they will fail but when.
I’ve done this with sectional track and had it work well so I suppose it should be possible with flex track. It would have to be a very good soldering job though, so as not to break while the rail is being bent through a curve.
Will it work on flex track layed straight? Yes.
Will it work on flex track on a curve? No (from experience).
David B
To elaborate - even with Code 100 rail, the area of a direct rail end-to-rail end joint is somewhere around 1 square millimeter. Solder has very limited strength in shear (crosswise to the rail) and not much more in tension (pull the rails apart - POP!)
However, there is a cure! If you absolutely, positively need to simulate Ribbonrail, you can solder a short length of small-diameter wire into the angle between the head and the web of the rail. Even #24 wire is a LOT stronger in shear than the unreinforced solder of a direct butt joint.
Those with the necessary equipment can electrically butt-weld the rail. Have a fire extinguisher handy!
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with rail joiners)
This guy makes a jig that aligns the rails just for this purpose. I am waiting for the one I ordered. www.rodneysrailroadtools.com/index.html
I have soldered flex without joiners on curves. Curve the track first. Solder the rails and lay a small piece of wire across the joint on the non visible side and solder that to the rails. I use .015 brass wire and once its painted its almost invisible. On tangent sections I do not solder and put a small gap in the rail. I know hand layers that never use joiners. A freind of mine even cut his HO scale code 55 rail mains to 39 feet and laid code 40 N scale rail for his yards and sidings. The small bits of wire look like joint bars.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for Rodney Lux to get the tools to you. I ordered a few of his tools back in January '08. After no end of excuses as to why I hadn’t received the tools, (house broken into and materials and lathe stolen along with finished products, mail service to Canada not reliable, not allowed to send tools to Canada from the U.S. among several other reasons), I finally received my tools at the beginning of August, about 7 1/2 months after ordering them. This isn’t made up, I have his Emails as proof. On the other hand, I have to say that the tools are fairly well made and accurate in “N” scale.
As far as mail service to Canada from the U.S. is concerned, everything that I have ordered from the U.S. has usually arrived in 7 to 10 days of the shipping date advised by the shipper. 14 days maximum. Rodney is the only one who seems to have a problem???[#oops]
Blue Flamer.
Great. Thanks for the info. I guess I will take a breath and try to wait patiently. [xx(]
My suggestion would be to use joiners - they make the track a lot easier to solder.
Why leave the joiners off? What is there to gain?
Bob Whitten