Model Railway Forum

I have been fitting a tricky piece of code 75 flexitrack between two fixed points on a curve. In evitably there's a tiny gap between joins - say 1mm or maybe 1.5mm. THings seem to run ok over it. Does anyone solder to close the gap in such circumstances?

I'd leave it - especially as everything is running OK. You should have a gap anyway, and 1mm is about right. R-

Andrew, track needs gaps of about 1mm to cope with expansion. Soldering could mean you get twisted and broken track when it warms up.

Thank you for the advice. I'll leave it alone then!

I have gaps between all the joints on my track, just like the real thing before welded track.

Welded track has expansion joints instead. If the gap is very large I sometimes solder but normally I dont. A tiny gap is a good plan as that way in the heat of summer you dont get track distortion. It is rare to have track distortion issues, but I have once had it on a previous layout. It was only in one area of the layout on one piece of track and both rails distorted outwards by about half to one millimetre. Fortunately trains didn't have an issue as the distortion remained until I took the layout down several years later. It was a hot summer that year.
My current layout, being very small is one I didn't expect to have an issue but I did, though it had nothing to do with my track. One of the two layout boards decided to twist ever so slightly and it was noticeable by about a mm at the join where the track crosses from one board to the other. I believe it was caused by the wood totally drying out in the hot summer as the wood was rescued as it was found washed up on the tideline.
The remedy for me is to cut the track near the join and use small removeable pieces of track to go across the join.. A task I keep saying I'm going to finish but not yet made the little track pieces... Easy enough job to do.

Hello MG. Interested to read about small removeable pieces of track across a join. Could you possibly explain further?