Kato expansion track - I wish I know about this years ago!

[gavino200]

I just learned about this today at a train show. I've seen them tons on times in stores, but I thought it was a coupler/uncoupler.

 

Kato 20-050

 

http://www.conrad.com/ce/en/product/211651/N-Kato-Unitrack-7078014-Vario-track-78-mm-108-mm

 

 

It's a variable length track for when your're finishing up a track segment and you can't get the tracks to come together just right. Apparently, you just fit this piece in and adjust it to perfect size. 

 

I saw it in action too and it works well. Most of the guys use them for their little drawbridge where they enter and leave their layout square.

 

I've spent literally dozens of hours trying to get layouts to work, by swapping in and out tiny pieces of different lengths. This bad boy would have saved a lot of pain.

[railsquid]

FWIW the Tomix version is this: http://www.tomytec.co.jp/tomix/products/n/1525.htm

[enodenlover]

The piece has come to the rescue a number of times when it looked like one of my temporary tabletop layouts wasn't going to come together like I planned. Every Unitrack user should have one or two, just in case.

[gavino200]

The piece has come to the rescue a number of times when it looked like one of my temporary tabletop layouts wasn't going to come together like I planned. Every Unitrack user should have one or two, just in case.

 

 

Yes, I bought two, even though I currently don't need it after playing 'Track Tetris' for the last two weeks. Somehow, even knowing this thing exists, makes me feel more relaxed :)

[cteno4]

Gavin,

 

Try to keep these separated as much as you can from curves and points. We had derailments around then in situations on our early club set up on the fly layouts. Never could diagnose exactly what was happening but when we removed them the issues went away.

 

They are handy and help from using a ton of s29, 45, and 64s! Now there are the s33 and 38!

 

One of our club members wrote a program to figure out combos to make up gaps!

 

Jeff

[kvp]

The usual issue is a flange riding up on the sliding part. Having the wheels centered on a straight beforehand helps avoiding it. The most affected are 2 axle cars after a curve or turnout, where the flanges are scraping the rails regardless of the guard piece in the middle. Using it is also a good way to find even the slightest misaligned wheelsets. Personally i prefer track tetris instead.

Edited January 8, 2017 by kvp

[medusa]

"Track tetris." Like that name. :)

[cteno4]

Yes it's pretty much as kvp noted with the flange being able to ride up in the slip space with sideways force on the car due to the curve pushing on the other end. Oddly though the side it would jump the rail on did not seem to be dependent on the orientation of the slip or curves. We had a lot of theories but non bore out well with experimentation as we tried different permutations to see if we could narrow it down. It was also intermittent and that's always frustrating to figure out, so we just went to track Tetris ans the issue went away... Unfortunately the places we needed to fiddle in the layout did not give a lot of straight area to put it in better locations in a long straight. I always meant to put a pair in the same folded dogbone we had the issues in to see if they behaved well there, but never got to it.

 

So just to say experiment with it to see your results, especially before affixing any track down!

 

Jeff

Edited January 8, 2017 by cteno4

[katoftw]

It also doesn't transfer the power real well.

[cteno4]

Hugh, never noticed that but we had multiple feeders about every 4-6' so well fed from both sides, but makes sense it may not give great contact. It is a pretty good surface area rail to rail, but I noticed some were pretty loose compared to others.

 

Did you see a big voltage drop across yours?

 

Jeff

[katoftw]

Maybe 20-30%. But as you said. Feeders each side of it prevents the issue.

[cteno4]

Wow that is a drop! I never slapped the multimeter on ours as it was the random derailing that was the issue for us.

 

An aside, We are trying an interesting idea for our new club sectional layout for the power. We are going to do a power feed to the unijoiners at the joiners at each track piece on each module and jump them together. In theory we should only have a max of like 6-8 track joints in either direction in each loop of the layout from a single main feeder for the main power and an additional 2-4 within each module added to that. Idea is to eliminate doing a main bus wire with electrical connectors to each module or between modules. We shall see how practical it is... If we have noticeable power drop at the other side from the main feed we can try a second feed there to see if that makes up for it. We are trying to eliminate as many fiddly bits and parts for layout setup as those have proved to be the time consuming ones, need more knowledge by those setting up and tend to break the most (we had even power poles fail on us).

 

Jeff

[katoftw]

I haven't attached a multimeter either. Just judging by eye the engine speed drop.