Well, I found some straight track (it’s the used track I ordered more than a year ago, which means that, after all this time, it *still* hasn’t been put away, ugh). So I think I have bad news and good news, or at least maybe okay news…
The bad news is that I don’t see any way the metal comes off easily, and quite possibly not at all, which also means that reattaching the metal to the new track will difficult also. I’d check the train forums and see what they say, at the very least it’s going to require you to be knowledgeable about working with metal and possibly have some tools.
The good news is that curved track is way way cheaper on BL than straight, about one-tenth the cost, and more people have it in large quantities, so it looks like you can them for 50 cents each in the USA if you decide to go the 9V route.
The other good news, maybe, is that there’s a lot more plastic and a lot less metal there than I’d thought. So, at the very least, without the metal, there should be enough plastic sticking up and it should be close enough to the correct width that you can at least sit a train on it and have it look like it’s sitting on ice-covered rails, rather than just sitting on rail-less ties. I don’t know if a static display like that has any appeal to you, I think it would still look cool, although you’d have to put up with kids during public hours asking ‘Why isn’t that train running?’ Ooh, what you do, is you have a little avalanche of snow cover part of the tracks, and the train is stopped there while space workers clear out the snow.
So then the less good news is that the underlying plastic ‘rails’ are not continuous. They have little cutouts and periodic gaps that the metal part bridges. I’m pretty sure that this is a recipe for derailment at any speed. But, it’s probably worth trying it anyway. So my new recommendation is that you bring the track to the Jan 6 meeting (if you’re gonna be there), and arrange for somebody to bring an RC train, and see if you can get it to run. (I don’t have any RC train assembled, you’re better off asking somebody else. I know there’s a lot of trains in the LUG, although I don’t know how many of them are RC.)