Saturday, July 10, 2010

Doing things the hard way

I am still trying to figure out a reliable way to run a separate center rail power feed to each turnout in a crossover from one main to the other.  I want them isolated for running conventional control independently.  So far, I have tried wedging a wire into the gap in the bottom of the rail (not secure enough), soldering to the black rail (solder sticks to everything but the rail),  Bending track pins 90 degrees and soldering to them (see picture, but left too much of a rail gap, kind of a rail pothole, and then I broke the solder joint trying to install the turnout), and finally, wedging in a spade lug into the underside of the rail (required a little "plastic" surgery on the turnout, holding together for now).  If the spade does not seem secure, I will revisit soldering, this time using flux.

So, once again, I am finding a way to make things more complicated.  Kind of a model railroad masochist . . .

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