Not wishing to start a ‘flame’ war, but simply an observation. Five years ago, when initially planning my railroad, I laid out track in the design that I wanted. Well, time took its toll (too much kit-bashing) and a substantial portion of my railroad was never connected to the continuous run mainline, but languished in the weather. A bout of enthusiasm, with completion of a major siding, complete with a shuttle circuit (with shuttle electronics protected by a couple of relays from the branchline power), saw me venture into the incompleted rear section of the railroad. The last 36 hours I have wired up the frog polarity microswitches for the three #6 Aristo switches and clamped the rail together. The section also contains numerous wide-radius switches as well.
More as a test, I connected two alligator clamp power supplies to the end of the rail and applied power. The loco responded smoothly over the entire section, rail that had never seen power and never been cleaned for five years. This was a length of many metres of rail. The track still had the familiar patches of ‘tea-stain’ rusting common on rail from that period of manufacturing. No feeder wires as yet have been fitted. The rail is clamped using a combination of standard Aristo rail joiners and Hillman track clamps.
I now have the tedious task of supplying power leads and feeder wires to the rail, along with the electronics to isolate the two Train Engineers that will be supplying power to that section.