Let me first say that I am an absolute electrical novice, so please be as basic as possible in your answers.
I have a 4x8 N scale layout using Kato Unitrack and I am using DCC. Many of the turnouts I have are older and are power-routing, thus, I am having trouble getting power to many of my tracks.
I really do not want to take the bottom plates of the turnouts off, I have heard you can solve the problem that way, but I really messed up one turnout trying.
I understand you can run power feeders to the tracks that cannot get power, but I have no knowledge at all of how to do that.
I would truly appreciate any assistance anyone can give me on this very basic problem.
You will get lots of answers, because everyone has their preferred method.
Here's a link to a video of the late Andy Sperandeo showing how he installed his feeders. They somehow got the audio and video out of sync, but if you ignore that it does a really good job of showing how Andy did his.
Treat your turnouts as gates. If you want power beyond the gate, you have to either go through the gate or go around it. The feeder wires you feel you may have to use are a way of getting around the gates. So, if you want power on either side of the gate, you must put it there....provide it. That means taking power from a main wire pair, usually/often called a bus, and connecting a feeder wire to the rails. They should be soldered. You have to keep the wires from one bus wire going to the same rail throughout. Same for the other rail. Off one bus wire, say a black one, you solder black feeder wire ends and then solder the other ends to the right rail. The red or white bus wire gets bared here and there, you solder red or white (or any colour other than the black you just used for the first set of soldered feeders), and solder their other ends to the 'other' rail. Keep them all systematically separated and you won't have a short any place.
That's it in a nut shell. It's a bit more involved, but that's the basics. For more involvement, you can get into trouble with power routing turnouts when you have them on either end of a siding. When one of the two is lined the 'other way', you'll get a short and your power system should shut itself down if it's working properly. In your case, if you have a double-ended siding, you will have to leave a gap at the frog rail end of the siding at one of its ends.
I don't think this is an easily answered question.
Not to disparage the OP in any way, but we don't know what he doesn't know, nor does he. Does he even have a bus? Does he know about wire gage, voltage drop and quality of DCC signal.
Books have been written to answer this question. I think the OP should start there. Here is one, he or she could start on He doesn't have to understand any of it, but it is a reference. Then his question might be, I have 100' of track and 14 ga stranded feeder and I want to install 20 ga solid feeder with suitcase connectors. Is this adequate?
I don't think this is a cop out, but the OP and YOU may disagree. My concern is that this is a case of too little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and we may be telling him how to attach a feeder while his underlying wiring is inadequate for the job.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
I think the biggest question in this case is, what types of turnouts are you dealing with? You say that you have older power routing turnouts. Are they Peco? Insulfrog? Electrofrog? Some other brand? More than one brand?
Rich
Alton Junction
The turnouts are all Kato Unitrack.
This is an exchange of information that has to run two ways, and it's meant to be evolutionary. So, I have responded to the original post in a reasonable way, and it's up to the OP to decide what else he feels he would like to know...or doesn't. I primed the discussion in my last paragraph by making it clear that the topic isn't cut-and-dried. At least, I hope I made it clear by introducing a caveat.
Actually this is relatively simple with Unitrack. Simply add feeders to the sections of track you want to power. This can be done using either a KATO terminal track section or their terminal joiners.
The main thing is to observe the color code and connect all of the blue wires together and connect all of the white wires together. If you are using Kato's wires they will already have the appropriate plugs. You will need one or more of Kato's junction blocks to connect them together.
Martin Myers
wblock The turnouts are all Kato Unitrack.
Like Peco Electrofrogs, Kato Unitrack turnouts must have the inner frog rails gapped to prevent shorts. While Kato Unitrack turnouts do not necessarily require feeder wires on all of the ends of these turnouts, it is good practice to do so unless you are dealing with unpowered sidings.
So, for maximum efficient performance, add feeders to all of the ends of Kato Unitrack turnouts and gap the inner frog rails.
Thanks for all the suggestions. mfm37 mentioned that using Kato products would make it pretty easy. He also mentioned the Kato junction blocks, which I can't seem to find on the Kato website. Would that possibly be part No. 24-827 http://katousa.com/images/unitrack/24-827.jpg
http://katousa.com/images/unitrack/24-827.jpg
Clickable link.
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
Unless Kato makes a distribution block that you can plug multiple wires into, at some point you will have to cut and splice wires. Back in the good old days, the connections were all made with plain wire adn screw terminals on both the terminal track piece and the power pack. These plug in connections are fine for a trivial train set layout but as soon as you get to the point where you need more feeders, it just seems to confuse people. You will need to cut one plug off each connecting wiere. The plug goes in to the terminal tracks and the power pack. The now plain wire ends - you need to connect like colored wire to like colored wire. A pair of terminal strips, one for each wire, makes things a lot neater than a big hung of wire soldered together, plus you can just unscrew a wire and move it if you change things around.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Here is the Kato terminal adapter cable 24-843
http://www.katousa.com/images/unitrack/24-843.jpg