Cutting Unitrack or Finetrack?

[Bernard]

As I'm planning out another rail line and this time I'll be using a lot of Unitrack. Have any of the members here had to cut Unitrack or Fine track to fit into a specific length? And if so, how did you do it? What do you use for rail joiners?  

(Photos would be greatly appreciated for the process)

[David]

Finetrack might be more conductive to cutting, since it uses seperate rail joiners. In both cases you'd face the problem that the bottom (and part of the sides) of the rail are embedded into the plastic, blocking the space where you would want to push in the rail joiner. Optionally you could just line them up nicely and then solder them together.

 

Alternatively you could just avoid cutting completely. Both Unitrack and Finetrack have variable length expansion tracks - short straight pieces that have a sliding mechanism to let them expand/contract by an inch or so, allowing you to bridge odd sized gaps. You could also use regular non-ballasted track (including flex track) to fill the gaps - code 80 section and flex track (i.e. Atlas, Peco) can be used with Unitrack using the Kato snap conversion track, and I believe code 80 track can be used directly with FineTrack.

[bill937ca]

There is a specific Unitrack piece designed to fit Tomix track although it is usually referred to as a Snap Track Conversion piece in North America.  It's #20-045 and the Tomix track piece fits right into the base. Newhall Station has the best picture around  picture of this item:

 

http://www.newhallstation.com/store/product_info.php/cPath/26_40/products_id/666

 

Edit: I found another photo of this piece in use.

 

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/nishiki8119/e/5dc47dbc83acdf790472241cb6cf2bfb

[cteno4]

bernard,

 

the unitrak can be sawed with a razor saw (and helps to have one of those flat metal rail gauges to hold the track nice and steady) or snipped. then just saw through the road bed. you can just make sure the rail end is clear underneath and slip a plain old atlas track rail joiner on  the rial to connect it to other track. we did this in quite few times on the new jrm layout, worked great.

 

ill see if there are some picts i can take on the modules i have here at the house right now. matthew did all the custom rails this go around.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[cteno4]

forgot to mention, both fine track and unitrak rail is not really embedded in the road bed, just held down by the plastic spikes. pretty much the same as flex track. so just need to maybe trim off one set of spike heads to get enough space back to slip the plain jane rail joiner in. of course if you are connecting to another unitrak end you will need to remove the rail joiner or you have to dremel out a square slot for the unijointer to slip into your new track.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Bernard]

Thanks everybody for the information.

Bill - I actually have that piece and it works quite nicely but I have a feeling I'm still going to have to cut some of the Unitrack and to make matters worse, it's the Viaduct tracks.  :confused3:

[cteno4]

Bernard,

 

the viaducts come apart to make things easier. another trick is you can cut the amount out of the center of a piece of track, then glue it back together so you have 2 nice unijoiner ends as well. with the viaduct you can glue some strips of styrene inside the viaduct base to stiffen it up.

 

you have to slice double or single viaduct.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Bernard]

Bernard,

 

the viaducts come apart to make things easier. another trick is you can cut the amount out of the center of a piece of track, then glue it back together so you have 2 nice unijoiner ends as well. with the viaduct you can glue some strips of styrene inside the viaduct base to stiffen it up.

 

you have to slice double or single viaduct.

 

cheers

 

jeff

 

Jaff,

Can you use Xuron Rail nippers on the rails to cut them or is it better to use a razor saw?

[cteno4]

pretty sure matthew used rail nips on all the ones he just did, ill check. i have use the razor saw in the past with my heat sink to act as a guide and something to hold the rails steady.

 

jeff

[inobu]

It seem to be a lot of work to cut the tracks, which still leaves a margin of error that may cause you a lot of headaches. With

these pieces as David pointed out, you should be able to get any length you want. The top track (S78S) is variable which is fully extended, the second is the S78S in the closed position. The third and forth are 45.5 and 29mm      

 

[smg id=787]

 

 

I also think Anyrail ($60, E39 or GBP 35) which pays for itself in design time, should eliminate the need to cut where as you can design the exact layout by part number. It has both Unitrack and Finetrack libraies

 

Inobu    

[cteno4]

ill give the other side of the coin on this.

 

as much as i love to just use only regular sections of track you do have to be careful with the expansion tracks with where you put them, some trains really dont like them. usually near curves is the problem. we used them on the first go around on the jrm layout and removed them due to problems with them derailing some trains.

 

also depends on how crazy/large your track plan gets. you can get yourself into situations where the geometry just works out that you cant find a combo of track lengths to work things out perfectly. when we had the problem with the expansion joints, matthew actually wrote a little optimization program to figure out the combo of 29s, 45s, 62s, 64s to make things come out right! i have done this manually in track planning programs. more of a problem with the double viaduct as you only have the 124, 186 and 256 to play with.... some configurations get you into line up problems.

 

when we did the latest jrm layout i tried to see if i could make everything work out with just unitrak pieces, but it really didnt in some places. usually you can get away with a few mm here and there on a larger loop (unitrak is forgiving) but this layout is now sectional and has to break into 1m sections so that made it almost impossible to not have to cut track, so we did it in like a dozen places. saved a lot in buying more small sections and worked out the geometry perfectly! not hard to get things accurate in the cutting. and we could measure the lengths needed in theory with xtrak cad and then those matched up to the actual needs once the track was all laid out. having the layout with all the track screwed down and having to break apart every meter has made making things line up perfectly more important and cutting the track has made it possible and works!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[inobu]

Yeah, the S78S is tricky in that the center metallic joiner moves when it is fully extended but you only want to use these

pieces to get a few mm (1 to 8 max). Anything more then the rail will flex too much.

 

They also have the tendency to bow up because of the sliders in the ballast. Maintaining alignment and securing the ballast is

important to avoid derailments issues.

 

 

Inobu

[NozomiFan]

IMO I think that because Unitrack is a specific track length, it should not matter unless you have a uneven amount of track on one side of the layout. Maybe a reference of the Layout, like a picture or a drawing? So we could help you better?

[cteno4]

IMO I think that because Unitrack is a specific track length, it should not matter unless you have a uneven amount of track on one side of the layout. Maybe a reference of the Layout, like a picture or a drawing? So we could help you better?

 

it happens when you use a lot of different radius curves in an unsymmetrical way. doing easements are a typical way this happens quickly. also traveling some at a 45 will start to make things go out of whack with the track lengths. while you can usually recover with fixed unitrak it can take a real squiggle of a lot of small pieces in the right combo to make things come out perfectly.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[cteno4]

I think our greatest problem was having them near curves as that would push one side's flanges against the split rail and maybe make it ride up on the split point. we kept them pretty short as we thought longer ones would be an potential problem as they did seem more loose when spread out more.

 

folks have used them well on ntrak modules to snap into other modules easily. but there you are usually talking about a long long straight away!

 

i have the 5 or 6 we had and always planed to go back and look at them more closely, but never did...

 

cheers

 

jeff

 

 

Yeah, the S78S is tricky in that the center metallic joiner moves when it is fully extended but you only want to use these

pieces to get a few mm (1 to 8 max). Anything more then the rail will flex too much.

 

They also have the tendency to bow up because of the sliders in the ballast. Maintaining alignment and securing the ballast is

important to avoid derailments issues.

 

 

Inobu

 

 

[Bernard]

These photos aren't the greatest to show the area I'm talking about but here I go.

Point A is an oval right now on top of a mountain. I'm going to take a part of the oval out and open it up to join with the double Unitrack viaduct which will form a dog bone layout to point B (Willow our cat is on and won't be part of the final layout) where flex track will circle the city and return to the viaduct, thus avoiding a reverse loop. But to make the bridge to the double viaduct I will use single viaduct track connecting to the flex track.

[to2leo]

I think Jeff and inobu gave some very valid point.

 

Bernard, seeing the cat, you got me thinking, did you dedicate a building in your layout just for them?  Like a pet store or an office building?

[Bernard]

I think Jeff and inobu gave some very valid point.

 

Bernard, seeing the cat, you got me thinking, did you dedicate a building in your layout just for them?  Like a pet store or an office building?

I wish. They and fascinated by the trains and try to sneak into the train room. They actually stay at the door waiting for the right moment.