Glad to see some of you were able to solder wire to "V" rail. Depending on the location of the failed switch on our club layout, we were most times not in a good position to try hard enough. Also, we were always afraid of melting the plastic spikes. Because if we botched the job, then we would have to replace the switch, which was a lot more work. The "drill and fill" method I described above was relatively quick to do and allowed us to use a lower power soldering iron.
I really like Atlas O switches even despite the problems mentioned. The good people at Atlas O donated a lot of track and switches to our club when we were building our layout during 2000-2002. If we need to replace a switch, and still have one of the old models, I just simply re-drill the jumper wire holes on the bottom and attach larger gauge wires before we install the switch.
