Exonian

I am new to the modelling. I have seen a number of videos which have demonstrated how power feeds are soldered onto the track. I was wondering what was the advantage of this approach against soldering the feeds onto the rail joiners. The videos warn that a problem with soldering onto the track is that a novice can easily melt the plastic sleepers and chairs. Soldering onto the joiners remove this problem but I have not seen anyone advocating this approach. Another advantage of feeding the power to the joiner is that these can be purchased already made up. For a novice, the expense of buying power feed joiners might be less than the cost ruining track.

Many thanks for your very useful comments. To answer David's query my reason was naivety. Being new to the hobby, I picked a number of wagons that I fitted my requirement. I didn't take the makers into account. I have learnt the hard way. The only problem is that, as far as I can see, there is no way of ascertaining what coupling is provided except through the photo.

I have just started on the hobby. I have thought the tension lock couplings look awful so I have decided to standardise on Kadee couplings. Conversion was straight forward on my Bachmann wagons with their NEM coupler pockets, however I am having problems on how to convert my Hornby wagons. See attached. I have bought the Kadee Magne-Matic Coupler Sample Test Kit (KDE13) but the enclosed conversion list does not include Hornby.

Dear all Many thanks for all the comments. Very useful. Amazingly, today, I found the attached track plan on a website. My next task is find out the meaning of all the symbols on the plan. Do you think 24A and 25A are catch or trap points?

Hello I am new to railway modelling. The subject for my first layout is the Gooods Depot in the attached map. Do I need catch points? I can see possible places: 1) where the line from the depot meet the branch comin from the south; 2) where the branch lines meets the main line (on the embankment by the goods depot); 3) where the line from the basin meets the main line. Many thanks