There are certain things that should be illegal to place
into my hands. A soldering iron/pencil is one of them. (Believe me, I'm much safer
with a gun!)
Since I have another operating session coming up this
Saturday and we experienced a couple of electrical continuity issues in the
yard ladders during the last op session, brilliant me decided to solder many of
the electrical joints and rail joiners. That was probably a mistake!
Even though I attempted to heat from the inside of the
rail and solder the outside I ended up with multiple blobs on the inside track surface.
Hours later of filing I still needed to do something about the shininess.
Since Woodland Scenics' brown paint pen won't cover metal, I
started by painting with some of the black blob acrylic paint I use on my river
surfaces. When that dried, I then covered it with the brown paint pen. When
that dried I then scraped the rail
surface and tested everything.
With the exception of electrical issues with some of the
Peco points (a problem that will continually require tweaking) everything now runs.
My only concern is one turnout where the heat loosened the frog rail joint. I
am really good at trading one problem for another!
The op session should be interesting!
Solder Blobs:
Black Gook:
Tie Brown:
Cleaned & Ready To Go:
