Feeder Wires versus Solder

In reading a lot of background (in an effort to mitigate rework) I have seen nearly everyone, with a lot more experience than me, solders the track power feeder wires rather than use the Atlas wired terminal connectors.  I decided to dive in and give it a try on some old scrap track after watching a video I found online.  It looked really easy..........

Now I knew that it couldn't really be this easy from the start but I went ahead and got a soldering iron & some solder.  Oops - probably should have got some flux but Home Depot was out.  My first few attempts actually did attach the wire to the track but I had to clean things up with a file, before a car would roll smooth across the connected area.

This was the second attempt and the wire nut was simply a way to energize the circuit for an op test.  I did my first solder test with just a small piece of wire rather than the real feeder wire length.  The wire is 20/2 from Home Depot at $0.24 a foot versus $3.00 for a pair of Atlas Wired Terminal Connectors.  With 65' feet of track, and a connection required about every 3', the cost savings really sold the solder argument pretty quick.

So, as I said - not pretty but the wire was on.  Then came another post from N Scale Net directing me to Mike Fifer's video:

How To Solder in Model Railroad

Mike owns Fifer Hobby Supply and has a huge online reference How To section.  Using flux (as all the NSN folks recommended) along with adding the solder to the iron first, both worked well.  Now, time for more real practice before I dive into solder on the real layout.  It's all about the learning......