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power feeds


Exonian
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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.

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Moisture, particularly from ballasting, seeping into the joiners, sets up corrosion and this eventually leads to loss of connection. If you are using flexible track you may be able to make the gaps between the sleepers, left to enable it to flex, large enough to solder there. The other thing is to practise on scrap track, or where it won't be seen. Make sure the iron is powerful enough and hot, and don't linger too long.

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If you snip the webs between sleepers on flexi and leave a gap with no sleepers each side of the soldered joint then you can avoid melting sleepers, soldering the dropper first then drilling the hole is probably easier than soldering in situ.  Obviously steel track is a sod to solder, 90% of mine i steel, and |I guess stainless steel is next to impossible!.  

Rail joiners are probably the worst place to attach a wire if they also join two pieces of track, they are the no 1 source of my open circuits outside in the garden, and cause constant trouble,

I try to use as few fishplates as possible, long sections of flexi not short chunks mosaiciced up to make a long bit.

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