10-23-2009, 11:17 AM
The main thing with solder is it should not be "globbed on." The most critical thing about solder is that the parts you are soldering together must be clean and shiny before you try to solder, then use a thin coating of rosin flux on both pieces in addition to using rosin core solder. Drops should be single strand, solid wire only because a multiple strand wire will be too big. I would make an attempt to solder a drop to every piece of rail, but if you have a short section of rail, like a 1-6 inch piece of snap track to fit a spot where your flex track was just too short to complete the space, but you didn't want to cut off a short piece of flex to reach, it would not hurt to either solder the rail joiners to make the flex track 1-6 inches longer, or I think the preferred method would be to bridge the joint with a wire from one rail on the flex to the corresponding rail on the short piece. By the way, I don't worry about melting a few ties when soldering. They are easily removed after the rail is soldered. I save extra ties left over from cutting the flex track to length, and I also bought a box of Campbell wooden ties a few years ago and stained them with Minwax teak stain which is pretty close to new creosote tie color. I cut off the spikes on the plastic tie strip pieces and just slide them under the joint or slide the wood ties under the joint. Once ballasted, the replacement ties are invisible.