It is a good practise to provide some redundancy in your electrical distribution system. I don't mean doubling up your bus and feeders, but certainly you should have multiple feeders to your rail system. Metal joiners should do a good job of ensuring distribution for the most part, but they are notorious for letting you down due to oxidation over time, and also due to simple mechanical failure...they do seem to widen and splay in places where your tracks manage to flex and torsion when heavy engines pass over head. The result is intermittent train performance...always bad and frustrating.
How important are looks to you? If you are early to the hobby, a terminal track may be an important item for you for the sake of a notional grade crossing and a rerailer if it also doubles as that feature as the Bachmann ones do. If you would prefer a more realistic look, and less of a "this-is-all-wired-up" look, then soldered feeders are the ticket, and somewhat more reliable than the mere metal joiners. Now you must decide if you want that reliability at your own hand with soldering feeders or just purchased and used the Company's terminal joiners. I hope you are catching my drift...they're still metal joiners. You may feed them courtesy of Atlas, but if the metal to rail interface should fail, which is what I contended at the outset, you still have fed joiners that have failed. No further ahead in my frame of reasoning.
So, you still are faced with a continuity problem to the rails. My point is that you really should develop a facility with soldering and use the terminal joiners by also soldering the joiners to the rails they join, or simply make your own feeders and solder them to the rails at places where your system's needs are better met. Let the joiners only provide mechanical alignment, and whatever continuity they can. But soldered feeders are where the majority of model train enthusiasts find a safe refuge...and fewer heart attacks caused by anger and frustration.
To sum up my rationale: regular metal joiners and terminal joiners are still metal joiners that fail because they are ...joiners. There are two possible solutions: solder the joiners to the rails at intervals, or cut your own 22 gauge wires to length, bare their ends, and solder each end to something that is part of your power source-to-rail system. Soldered feeders properly done will provide years of foolproof power directly to your rails.
