Model Railway Forum

Over the years I have gathered every soldering iron known to man from a small highlighter sized battery powered one, to a car cigarette lighter powered one, to a hefty Weller pistol gun, to a hot air station and a variable temp Lidl one with the stiff cable mentioned above.

The one I use most is a basic 15W Antex with replaceable tips, large for track work, tiny for decoder and smd led work.

Thank you to everyone for all the thoughts, experiences and advice.

For a general purpose soldering iron you cannot knock the Antex 18W and 25W irons, we extensively used the 24V versions as our lab benches had built in power supplies with a 24V take off through Belkin sockets specifically for soldering irons.

At the end of the day you need to look at how far you are going to go with soldering, if kit building is a future aim then buying a suitable soldering station now will save buying twice. At home I used to use a 25W mains Antex for all electronic and rail soldering without any difficulty but since acquiring a 40W station rail soldering is an awful lot easier. I must admit I subscribe to the maxim - you can never have too much power!

When advising people struggling to solder to rails and melting sleepers my standard advice has been to use a higher power iron those that have heeded the advice have usually come back to say it really has improved their soldering.

Richard