soldering track

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

I am getting ready to start laying track with in the next couple of days and I would like the opinion of you all on the board. On my last layout I soldered the track after it was in place. After it was held in place with track nails I soldered the drops to the buss wires and made sure everything ran smoothly. I then soldered the outside of the rails, then glued them in place and finally ballast the track work.

I had thoughts of soldering three lengths of flex track together before on the workbench and then lay the track. I solder every other joint alternating sides so I still have some expansion room. I was also contemplating painting the track and weathering the rails before while still on the workbench. I was thinking that this may speed up the process or am I just getting ahead of myself and trying to accomplish too much.

Your thoughts are appreciated and how do you solder and weather etc.

Thanks again.

2

You could solder two pieces of flex track together into one unit, but I think three would be a bit unwieldy at 9’ long. BTW you could use Atlas joiners with the wires already attached…put them on as the joiners between the two pieces of flex track, then solder the joiners and rails together.

I prefer to paint the rail and ties before installing. I ‘paint’ the rails with Neo-lube, an electronics lubricant that dries to a flat dark gray (and conducts electricity) and then paint about half the ties with different colors like brown, dark gray etc. leaving about half black.

3

I solder feeders to the bottom of the rail and drill the holes for the wires before laying the track.

That way, they don’t show at all.

4

if you paint the track before bending it, you will get a bunch of silver spots on the sides of the rails when in moves to make the curves.

grizlump

5

I recently stumbled across a multi-part instruction on YouTube.com that probably will answer most of your questions. Check out http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=laying+flex+track&aq=f and see what you think. Please keep in mind that the presenter is NOT and actor and is videoing himself unassisted. Having said that, there is a lot to learn in his presentations.

Ray

6

Good link. Merely searching YouTube with broad terms such as “model RR, HO railroads”, etc will give you a large list of videos on track laying, scenery, working with foam, etc. to kill an entire weekend.

7

Personally if there is any curve in the track at all I hate the way track done in this manner looks. One runs the risk of destroying 6 to 12 ties, that leave a gap of 1-3 inches where there is no real support for the rail. One must put in fake ties to make it look good and hand spike the rails to provide them support through the gap. As so:

795×389 60.4 KB

I also never solder unless it is flex track on a curve. Done in place one can loose zero ties. My soldered joints end up looking like this:

768×512 102 KB

for weathering I either use pre-weathered rail or it is the absolute last thing I ever do.