Setting Up Model Railroad Track

Your set came with integrated roadbed track, so this is a relatively easy task. Your track's rails are an inverted "T"; the cross-member of the "T" faces down. The joiners are metal clips that slide under the rail with the vertical part of the rail coming up through a groove in the center of the joiner. You connect your track pieces by simply sliding the rails that don't have joiners into the joiners on the rails that do. The trick is getting the rails from both track pieces into their opposite joiners at the same time.

Manufacturers usually place joiners on each end of their track pieces on opposing rails. Although the joiners come pre-installed, they are removable. Sometimes when disassembling track the joiner's don't stay on the track piece they came on. This can be a nuisance when you go to put the track together again.

Kato's integrated roadbed Unitrack has what they call Unijoiners; the Unijoiners have the metal joiners embedded in a plastic body. Unijoiners are captive on Kato track pieces, but can be removed using a tool which is included with Kato track and train sets. This is why Unitrack is my track of choice. The German manufacturer Tillig offers an integrated roadbed track which closely resembles Kato's.

It's very important to get both sides of the base of the rail into the joiner properly. It's a common mistake to get only one side of the rail into the joiner; this causes the rails to be misaligned. Misaligned rails can derail your train.

When building a basic oval, I usually assemble the curved pieces of my track first to make two 180 degree semi-circles. Then I add the straight tracks to complete the oval.