Beginning my freelance Unitrack N scale Layout and noticed many rails are very slightly uneven at the joints when you run your finger over them. Has been occurring along straight pieces. Amazingly my 15 and 19 inch radius are just about perfect. Made sure everything was in alignment when snapping pieces together. All track is brand new. Filed a few joints at a slight 45 degree angle and problem was solved. My question is is this a good practice to continue or will it cause more future problems? What causes unevenness? Will it cause a problem if left alone in train operation? Factory issue when shearing rail pieces ? Is there a better solution? All answers and suggestions welcomed.
This will depend on a lot of factors, principally the actual size of the difference.
All manner of things. One of which is:
However, there are others. It could have been slightly bent in shipping, it could be some other factory defect, perhaps it is due to warpage caused by the temperature in your train room. There’s a lot of possibilities here.
This depends upon just how much of difference there was. I mostly use O Gauge, so any difference less than a 64th is laughed at by my trains, which happily roll over the defect. But, as I recall, N Scale got quite a bit more nitpicky and liked derailing on small details.
It probably means the rail isn’t in the rail joiner.
Kato Unitrack has plastic sections that click together to hold the track sections in place; each of them has a metal rail joiner not unlike what say Atlas uses to connect Snap-Track. It is possible to click the Unitrack together seemingly OK, but have one rail slide over the metal joiner, causing a height discrepancy.
When I put in a new section of track I always run a finger along it to check - if it’s a noticeable difference it’s always because only one rail is in the joiner. I’ve never seen Kato Unitrack that was mis-formed at the factory.
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I have Kato Ho Unitrack. Similar issue. All brand new. The difference is tiny, maybe 1/64”. For what Unitrack costs, I expected better consistency. I just take a file to the high one.