track

[willis]

hi,
i got 4 sections of track the other day. they are about 2 feet long, steel with grey ties. on the back it says ref 2000, made in france, A-2-line. can anyone tell me anything about them? also i tried to solder feeder wires to them and it will not stick. HELP.
thanks, willis.

 

[MasonJar]

If solder will not stick, perhaps they are steel, rather than the usual brass or nickle silver. They grey ties might be to represent concrete ties (instead of wood) that are now more and more common on the prototype.

As for the manufacturer, I cannot even guess. Perhaps a little googling is in your future...?

Andrew

 

[Russ Bellinis]

The easiest way to tel if the rails are steel is to use a magnet on them. If they are steel, the magnate will hang on. As far as the soldering problem, the rails need to be clean and you need to use rosen based flux to get the solder to adhere. Also the rails need to be hot enough to melt the solder, if you are heating the solder with yur iron and trying to stick it to the rails, it won't work. To protect your ties, turn the rail upside down, and see if there are any little plastic "bridges" betwen the ties, if so, cut them out of the 6-8 ties on each side of where you want to solder. Then slide those 6-8 ties on each side of your solder joint together away from the joint. Then before you start to solder, take a couple of wet rags and put them over the rails between the place you want to solder and the ties. Now you can get the rail as hot as you need to to get it to solder without fear of melting the ties, the heat will not go past the wet rags until all of the water in them has boiled off.

 

[willis]

rail

thanks guys,
a magnet will stick very well to the track. when i could not solder to the track i tried on the rail joiners, still no luck. i used rosin solder and a very hot pistol grip gun. i filed the metal, scraped it, washed it with acid and still no luck. i want to use these pieces as a test track so i guess i will use alligator clips instead. also the joiners are spot welded to the track.
thanks , willis.