Should be Mandatory

With your right hand raised and your left hand on the Walthers catalog repeat after me:

“I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the installation of feeder wires to each and every rail, and will to the best of my ability, install bus wires of sufficient gage with soldered connections throughout. So Help Me God.”

Thanks...

Yes, yes, yes.... LOL

And yet

many people have no issues with not getting a wire to each and every piece of track and not soldering all joints. Lance Mindheim is a good example. 

Risk versus reward

You wouldn't make a very good insurance salesman.

At its core it is an insurance policy. Allows you to rest easy knowing no rail will ever be without power. And it is an inexpensive policy considering it only costs one time a couple cents worth of wire and a few minutes installing. A trivial investment considering the scope of building a model railroad. Minimum investment, 100% risk removed.

Lance may do it but if there were 100 Lances I am willing to bet at least one of them would experience a problem. Feeders to every rail would make 100 Lances successful 100% of the time.

Feeder wires

I totally agree that there is a definite "feel-good" element involved in wiring every piece of track. Taking it a step further; if one wires the feeders to a terminal strip (in reasonably manageable batches of six or so to a strip), any dead section could quickly be identified with just a small screwdriver. The same thing works for the frog juicers (boy, I love those things!) and any other wiring you need to be able to trouble-shoot. Of course, trouble is what one is trying to eliminate altogether by means of wiring every rail, so I guess it's a sort of Mobius circle when you think about it. (Don't know if I got the spelling right on that one!) Anyway, I'm sure that anyone with Lance M.'s experience would build a layout as trouble-free as one could make it, even though he espouses a minimalist approach to layout design. In fact I think he's the Philip Glass of the model railroad world!  (All you fellow musicians out there, all together now, "oh, yeah, that guy!") Before you draw the wrong conclusion, all I mean by that is, he can, and does, build and design layouts that embody prototypical realism and operation without dozens of turnouts and a spaghetti-bowl of track. (Check out his books). I'm going to feed every rail anyway, and solder joints, too ...

As Ripley said in Aliens, "Nuke 'em from orbit - just to be sure"

                                    Fred1940

*C.I.G., Cumberland Transfer RR

(*Chief In Garage, elsewhere, not so much...) 

Yep

If I had been building layouts all my life it might have been different I am sure. Soldering to flex track is a drag and has resulted in more than a few mutant ties. What seems to work for me is to tin the wire with a reasonable glob of solder, clean the rail side, put a bit of flux on it and press the wire on with the soldering iron. Less rail heating so fewer ruined ties. Using a euro-style barrier strip as the end point for track feeds has worked very well. As has the four conductor primary wire (16 gauge) found in the Canadian Tire auto sections -- all my drops come from BDL168 zones. I am sure some of the issues come from mixed Atlas flextrack and MicroEngineering. The Atlas rail joiners allegedly for code 83 are too big. The ME joiners only fit their track and I have not been able to warp them to bridge the two track sources. And not smart enough to grind the ends to match. Problem is that the metal joiners can act as expansion joints as the track heats and cools.

This is working for me

Try this:

1. On clean rail place a dab of flux on the web of the rail.
2. Lay a 40W hot conical tip against the rail at a shallow contact angle into the corner formed by the web and rail base, touch the rail base with solder at the tip contact point, just a dab.
3. Tin the feeder wire.
4. Bend the tinned end of the feeder wire to a right angle.
5. Pull the feeder wire down through its hole and twist as necessary until the right angle end lays against the tiny solder blob on the rail.
6. Briefly touch the iron tip to the wire and rail at the soldered area. It only takes a split second.
7. Clean the soldered area with 92% IPA on a stiff brush. (Or use no-clean flux)

Works great and no melted ties.

Six months ago I had never soldered train track in my life. I practiced on a scrap piece until I was proficient and could solder without melting ties. Since then I have soldered countless feeders without melting a single tie. It's easy and quick once you get into a groove doing it.

My little camera doesn't do macro so it is hard to get a good close-up of a soldered joint. Here is about the best it could take. This is 83 track right after soldering and before flux clean off. Notice the solder flowed right up to the tie rail clip but didn't melt it off. I also take my fingernail and press on the soldered wire to force it down at an angle tight against the rail. Virtually disappears when painted.

feeder wiring

One thing I do with short pieces of rail, Just like the prototype does with occupancy detection, I make a little stirrup, pre-tin it and the rails and then solder it across the joint. Saves running a feeder to a short piece of rail! John colley, Sonoma, CA

soldering wires to track

If you are having soldering problems then your main problem is you iron is not hot enough [30 watts of greater for track]. I have no problems in soldering wire to track with no sleeper damage. Flux, hot clean iron [ a must]  and use good solder and a good flux.

Most of the solder problems associated with soldering wire to track is making a cold joint caused by a iron not hot enough, bad solder or you have not given enough time to allow the items to heat up and the solder should flow smoothly.  Also your track when you are going to solder should be very clean. I use my Dremel with a wire brush to clean the side of the track.  If you are not used to soldering then practice on some old track and keep going till you get it right.

I do not think that every peace of track should be wired. I like to solder the joints of two pieces of track then add the feeder wires.. All points should be hot wired with feeder wires.. The loss of power in  six feet of track is next to nothing and if you have your DCC/DC set up correctly then you won't have any troubles.

Happy railroading.

Bob Clelland. Brisbane. AU

Track Feeders

Good idea to place a lot of feeders but if you're using block detection for instance using the NECDCC BD20 all the feeders can screw around with your detection.

Agree with tiermanc. 

Agree with tiermanc.  Multiple feeders can interfere with some DCC block detection.  Read the documentation before you start installing multiple feeders within a block.