Invisible electrical connections

[highpeak]

Palatine Models http://www.palatinemodels.co.uk/ make a handy etch that works nicely with ply and rivet construction to provide unobtrusive electrical connections to track. Building US track with plastic tie strips there's not really a way to use them, but it occurred to me that if I added a tie (sleeper) that was double sided copper clad I could do the same thing by electrically connecting the two sides of the tie.

Fast Tracks http://www.handlaidtrack.com/ sells double sided PCB ties, I am not sure if C&L sells similar stuff as it's a while since I built any British stuff, but I think they might. With the double-sided PCB material it's a simple matter to drill a hole and solder a piece of brass rod to link the two sides electrically. Obviously you now have to gap the underside of the tie, but you can now solder a feeder wire to the underside of the tie and end up with a hidden electrical feed.

[Welly]

Hidden electrical connections will be a nightmare to fault find! Many people had tried the ply and rivet connections and found them very unreliable. I think the mechanical stress on the soldered rivet/rail joint makes them electrically unreliable.

 

I also have misgivings about soldering rods between the two sides of circuit boards, it is impossible and also undesirable to get the joint completely flat - I have soldered many circuit boards in my time and the most reliable solder joints are always proud of the board.

 

The only way to get hidden connections is to solder the wires to the underside of the rail between sleepers which is only possible to do at the time of laying the track.

[gordon s]

I use a similar technique on ET which works well.  I cut one of the plastic sleepers away and replace it with a PCB strip sleeper and then solder the wire in the position where a chair would be.  The joint is made onto the sleeper and rail and the wire taken down through the baseboard.  Once painted they are relatively unobtrusive.  Not totally invisible, but certainly more acceptable than a wire soldered directly to the rail.

[66C]

Hidden electrical connections will be a nightmare to fault find! Many people had tried the ply and rivet connections and found them very unreliable. I think the mechanical stress on the soldered rivet/rail joint makes them electrically unreliable.

 

The only way to get hidden connections is to solder the wires to the underside of the rail between sleepers which is only possible to do at the time of laying the track.

I have found that if you drill a hole for the wire just on the other side of the rail from viewing and then pre-bend the wire so that the top sits under the rail when the wire is inserted then it can be soldered to the underside of the rail relatively easily. The result is just as good as wire soldered to the rail before laying.

 

Regards.

[highpeak]

I use a similar technique on ET which works well.  I cut one of the plastic sleepers away and replace it with a PCB strip sleeper and then solder the wire in the position where a chair would be.  The joint is made onto the sleeper and rail and the wire taken down through the baseboard.  Once painted they are relatively unobtrusive.  Not totally invisible, but certainly more acceptable than a wire soldered directly to the rail.

The snag with that for me is that I'm building US track with flat bottom rail using very thin plastic tie plates (salvaged from Central Valley tie strips), so there's no hiding place there for a wire the way there would be with a chair. I'm filing the gap close to the rail and then concealing it with the tie plate.

Each section of track gets two feeds, if they both fail I would have to add a wire soldered to the bottom of the rail, a bit tricky when the track is in situ. This is not a portable layout and it lives in a room that does not get direct sunlight and sees little temperature change over the year so I don't think there should be much in the way of strain caused by movement or rail expansion/contraction.