Any suggestions on how to paint Unitrack With A Rattle Can while preserving electrical continuity?
Planned on removing paint on rail tops after it dries with a plastic scraper. I would concentrate on the outside of the rails but am concerned that paint may seep into rail joiners. I am a model railroading Newby and I would like to avoid costly mistakes.
Any suggestions and how to’s would be greatly appreciated.
There was a recent thread on the topic:
https://forum.trains.com/t/painting-kato-unitrack/410160
Simon
Best advice, dust the rails (light coats) until you have an even color. Spray booms are called that because the coverage is thick
Lightly coating the railheads with oil will make cleaning easier.
dan
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My advice would be “don’t do it!” You may be confused by articles about people laying flextrack on cork subroadbed and then spraying everything before adding ballast. With Kato Unitrack, the gray part is the ballast and subroadbed both.
What I do is ‘paint’ the sides of the rails (both sides) with Neo-Lube from Micro-Mark, which dries to a flat dark gray. I paint about 1/4th of the ties flat brown, and 1/4 of them some version of ‘rail tie brown’ (which is more of a dark gray). Don’t paint the ties in the moving parts of a turnout.
You then can put on a wash of water, isopropol alcohol, and acrylic black paint (or India Ink) to bring out the texture in the ballast area. Finally, clean the tops of the rails with a BrightBoy.
BTW I do this to all the track sections on the workbench - before putting them on the layout.
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