About RailCompat

Model train track, couplers and DCC decoders come from a handful of manufacturers whose product pages rarely say, in one place, whether their gear will physically work with another brand's. Forum threads fill the gap with half-remembered experience and "it worked for me" anecdotes. This site exists to answer the compatibility question from each manufacturer's own published numbers, with a source link and a checked-on date attached to every figure — and to say plainly when a manufacturer simply hasn't published the number needed to answer the question, instead of guessing.

The site currently covers two things: HO and N scale track interchange for Kato UNITRACK, Atlas True-Track and Bachmann E-Z Track (comparing the rail-height, or "Code", numbers each manufacturer publishes), and DCC decoder sockets — which socket standard each locomotive brand uses, plus each brand's officially listed WOWKit and SoundTraxx factory-installed decoder record, sourced from TCS's and SoundTraxx's own product pages.

Coupler cross-reference is not covered yet, on purpose. Micro-Trains already publishes its own official conversion table on its own site, so a table copied from official sources wouldn't be better than what already exists there — and this batch only checked 3 of Micro-Trains' 14 brand groups, which isn't enough to add anything to it. This site's rule is that a comparison page only goes up once it's genuinely built from sourced data for every system it covers and adds something an existing official page doesn't already have, not as a half-finished placeholder.

Full sourcing and comparison rules are on the method page.

This is an independent, unofficial reference project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated on behalf of Kato USA, Atlas, Bachmann, or any other manufacturer named on this site, and it doesn't sell anything. Questions or corrections: hello@railcompat.com.