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The track plan for this very small layout calls for a few bridges, and just to make things complicated, the track is often curved while crossing the river. That meant I was going to need other track without a built-in roadbed which I could place over a bridge, which in turn meant I was going to need to join at least two brands of track.
Around here, the most common type of track sold is Atlas Snap-track. It has a two advantages, in my opinion -- it's cheap, and it has no roadbed. I realize that I shouldn't have bought Kato track if I didn't want integrated roadbed, but that's all covered in the first article where I explain that I'm completely new at this.
To make my problem even more complicated, I had to add some Snap-track just over the river crossings, which meant I needed to cut through my Kato track (if I wanted to keep the roadbed) or lay roadbed until the Snap-track met the Kato track. Kato does supply a convenient Atlas-to-Kato adapter, but it's relatively expensive for a very short piece of track. What's more, it's a straight piece, so I couldn't use it for my curved sections.
For this method, I made most of the modifications to the Kato track. The procedure is fairly easy, and with some careful cutting you'll make a very nice join.
Materials
Kato Unitrack
Atlas Code 80 Snaptrack
2 Atlas joiners
Woodland Scenics roadbed (or roadbed of your choice)
Procedure
- If you're going to join at the end of the track, just remove the unijoiners from the Unitrack and skip the next couple of steps.
- Stick a unijoiner into the rail without one before cutting. This is to stop the rail from sliding out once you cut the Unitrack
- Cut the Unitrack to the desired length using a rotary motor tool or a razor saw. I found out much later that a razor saw can cut through rails. That greatly reduced the amount of cursing, as I didn't have to deal with the pernicious cord from the Dremel that magically seemed to move where I wanted to cut. Keep the placement of the ties in mind when you cut, just to make your life easier when you ballast.
- Using a razor saw or a sharp knife, cut out some of the roadbed around the end of the rails to accommodate the Atlas joiners. It's quite easy if you make equal length cuts on either side, then just use some pliers to break off the tab. Unitrack is remarkably brittle.
- Solder the Atlas joiners to the Unitrack. If you don't want to solder, you'll have to crimp the the joiners slightly so that they don't rattle around the Kato rail.
- Cut the roadbed to the same width as the Unitrack using a spare piece of Unitrack as guide for the angle (in and ideal world, the roadbed would already be the same width). Cut the end of the foam roadbed to leave two teeth, which fit into the notches you made on the Unitrack.
- Lay and glue roadbed where required.
- Connect and/or solder Snap-track into place.
- Ballast as desired .
Here's a somewhat blurry picture showing the process.
 Joining Unitrack to Snaptrack Once the two tracks are ballasted, they look very good, and assuming no grotesque errors in rail cutting, everything should run smoothly. I haven't had any derailments over my joins as of yet. However, I'm also not running a high-speed train set. The diorama model in the gallery has Unitrack and Snap-track joined by this method.
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