I'm building a new layout out of some older Unitrack pieces. Some of the pieces are MUCH lighter in the color of the "gravel" roadbed. They were in some Viaduct sections I bought new some 15+ years ago at a LHS in Addison (N Dallas). I just figured Kato'd changed the color of their plastic roadbed at some point, and these were just NOS from before the change. Well, fast forward to today, and I decided they did not look too cool adjacent to newer, darker gray roadbed sections. So I decided to replace the track in the viaduct with some newer ground level track sections I had on hand. Lo and behold, I looked at the underside of the old sections, and the plastic was plain gray plastic, not speckled gray plastic like present ones. They were painted with the speckled gravel pattern on the top of the roadbed! Anybody ever seen that before? Also, I noticed their Unijoiners had copper (plated or solid, not sure) inserts, rather than the nickel silver inserts in all my other Unijoiners. Has anybody else seen older Unitrack with painted roadbed and copper Unijoiners?
Definitely seen the copper Unijoiners on the old, lighter track. I don't remember noticing that it was painted. I'll have to try to dig out some when I'm down the basement tomorrow, and see what alcohol does to it.
Just unscrew the track from the viaduct, and look at the underside of the track. It is unpainted, solid gray plastic. Who knows, it may be a collectors' item?!
Young Grasshopper, you have much to learn! In the beginning Unitrack roadbed was BROWN with no paint on the ties! Not only that, but Kadee was one of the early and major importers! You may also not know that the first Sekisui Kinzoku locomotive and cars had a small version of the x2f NMRA “horn hook” HO coupler before the Arnold Rapido coupler was adopted by the N Scale manufacturers! And yes, the molded-in speckled ballast effect was a relatively late innovation within the last 20 or maybe even 30 years. Charlie Vlk
I would simply order a bag of new style unijoiners and keep the slightly different color ballast sections. The ballast the 1 to 1s used did not always come from the same source so differences in color could be found sometimes with sections of track.
Somewhere around here I have a couple of those older sections and joiners. Time flies. Many years ago now....
I have some of the older Unitrack like that and I think the roadbed actually looks much better than the newer stuff because it has a much finer texture to the ballast.
I don't disagree, but I don't have more than a few pieces of it! The old stuff is also less glossy. But I understand the changes Kato made to reduce manufacturing costs, too. Most users who really care about the appearance are probably going to paint and ballast it the way they want anyway. But it's fine with me just the way it is, as long as it looks uniform. I'm tempted to try a can of Krylon Textured Pebble Spray Paint (Natural Stone) to see how it looks, for general gravel areas (that would not necessarily match, since most ballast does not match surrounding materials anyway (in 1:1).
