Hi All,

I have been reluctant to solder track due to experiences with expansion when my layout lived in a shed. I have replaced my flex track on the curves with set track curves in different combinatios (mostly R3 and 4) but I was sent an article for Railway Modeller Australia (railwaymodelleraustralia)  which mentioned the author had soldered his track apart from points and rerailers.  '

I would like to know…

Do you solder track on curves?

What sort of lengths do you solder up?

do you stagger rails on curves or keep the join ends level?

Do you allow any gaps at all?

If you stagger rails, do you butt join your rails to feed them through Peco sleepers?  Other techniques?

Thanks for any help you can offer -  I will be including any input in an article to appear early next year!

Regards

Trevor Gibbs
Editor  Railway Modeller Australia (railwaymodelleraustralia)  ( a free download if you are interested)

 

Trevor,

May I assume a few things?
I am assuming that you are in Australia and not here in Chilly Blighty?
I am also assuming that you are intending to work with nickel silver rail? Most proprietory rail is in fact nickel silver.

That being the case I doubt as though the temperature fluctuations in your shed will be enough to cause serious fluctuations in rail length. At home I work in an attached garage and during the winter here I can imagine that I have equally as great a temperature range as you do.
( I do keep an oil heater in the garage on a frost stat setting to prevent severe fluctuations. Ask an ex pat to explain the concept of frost to you. )

If using flexi track I do solder track on curves and use the track lengths as provided with no ill effect. I mostly use SMP track at a minimum radius of 3 feet as my work is in EM Gauge. Some of my trackwork has been on copper clad sleepers meaning that the rail is soldered to every sleeper. Again, no ill effects due to temperature fluctuation. Same applies to using wooden sleepers and soldering the rail to copper nails. All this work has been with nickel silver rail.

I have one experience of having problems with steel rail. Not something I have ever used but I was assisting a friend at Expo EM in England on a P4 layout. We had a warm May weekend and by the Sunday the track has expanded so much that one locomotive was unusable due to the gaps in the points closing up. Having said that there was no visible distortion or damage to the track work. The only casualty was my sense of humour.

I do hope that this will ease some of your worries and assist you in your creations.

 

I'm in SW France where we have a huge temperature change between summer and winter.  A cold winter will see -10C or less and a decent summer will see +38C or more.

My layout is in a portable site-office unit - a "Portakabin" type unit if you know what they are.  There are 5 windows in total - 2 on each long side and one full width of the end.  These windows are shaded by greenhouse type mesh netting although it's not particularly effective.  There is electric heating for winter use and an air conditioning unit for summer although neither is used when I'm not actually in there.

I have had rails buckle on two occasions where tracks are fairly close to the shaded windows so soldering joints is a definite no-no for me.

Same as Peter. I've never soldered rail joints. I use standard or insulated joiners, leaving an expansion gap. My layout is in our double garage here in Qld. We're on an island so get high humidity and high temperatures in summer and down to as low as 8 degrees in winter. A couple of mm gap is what's needed in every joint.

Now I do solider 2 lengths of flex track when both are straight then bend them  - of course one has to remove some sleepers bu they get glued back after.
In my room with no windows. insulated walls & ceiling,, the temperature varies from  8 -30C  & so far. no problems at all.  ( Now that I have said that. Murphy will turn up      )