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Thursday, October 30, 2014

Cutting Unitrack

Cutting Unitrack

Sometimes you'll be working on a track plan and find that you need a specific odd section of track that Kato doesn't make. What do you do?

The easiest approach is to take a straight or curved section depending on the piece you need and cut it to fit the size of the section you need. A straight razor back saw does this task easily. First you cut through the rails and then through the gray plastic road bed.

You then must cut out a small section of roadbed from the cut end of the specialized piece of Unitrack you just made. This will allow to use  Uni-Joiners or  regular rail joiners to connect the two pieces of Unitrack together. Before this connection is made, you must also remove a Uni-joiner from an uncut section of Unitrack. Then you can join the two pieces together.

Granted using regular rail joiners isn't an ideal situation, but you can create odd size pieces of Unitrack using this technique. I've used this method on occasion when completing the  Original JJJ&E and "new" JJJ&E track plans with Unitrack.

It solves a problem. that often goes like this..... Why doesn't Kato make a section of Unitrack "this" length.

I would avoid cutting turnouts or crossovers to size until you really becomes experienced using this technique. I've only cut turnouts once or twice and the results were fine.

You can practice this technique on spare pieces of straight Unitrack for starters. Make sure that you use a sharp blade in your razor back saw. That is the only pre-requisite.

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