Kato unitrack points

[kvp]

Yesterday i had a chance to look at a rather botched up Kato double crossover and found a few interesting details. The turnout is made out of two halfs of plastic base. The only thing keeping them together are a small plastic connecting plate that also serves as the isolator in the middle and the two stock rails on the outside. You can't cut the side rails without making it fall apart, so it's very hard to modifiy it for power routing or proper 4 blocks isolation (to be similar to a Tomix). Also, if you route extra wires under the middle piece, the isolators won't fit back correctly and you'll have large gaps in the rails. (don't superglue this part in as that will make the turnout unservicable) The wire out slots are added for 4 wire pairs near the turnouts, but the whole turnout is wired for single wire operation, meaning you need 4 times the power to throw it and if becoming unbalanced, the weekest might not throw fully. If you are using capacitor dischage units, then wiring each coil separately and using the crossing wire pair to connect the two inside rails is a good idea. That will give you a proper double crossover with throuh power in straight direction and double track isolation in crossover direction. (this is what most people actually need)

 

The owner (fellow club member) added 4 decoders to it, but were unable to fit them inside. On the other hand, he tried to bridge the rails for DCC, but connected each nearest rail pair, instead of across the turnout, essentially leaving the middle break intact. Also instead of soldering to the circuit board, he soldered to the underside of the rail (with the help of some acid), leaving the rails corroded and the roadbed partially molten. The turnout was also erased a few times, which is ok for the metal rails, but gets the paint off from the guard rails, which are actually roadbed gray underneath. (so be careful with abrasive rail cleaning near this turnout)

 

Recently i've also purchased 2 #4 turnouts and made some experience with them too. They are more well thought out than the #6 turnouts that have a fixed wire and single cast power routed middle and frog part. The #4-s have selectable power for the frog and separately powered blades, allowing spring switch operation (or even a smartfrog control circuit to be installed) and selectable power routing for easy DCC conversion and even a pluggable control wire. The moulding itself however is very ugly as all screws and connector sockets are protuding to the top, meaning they show as flat bumps on top of the simulated ballast. This is imho ugly and even Tomix could hide everything in their much smaller roadbed. The operation of the turnouts are ok, but prone to be picked by large axle distance bogies or cars if thrown by hand. It's better with the coild drive, but if the picking persists, i suggest adding guide rails before the point blade tips, like on Tomix turnouts, that move the flanges away from the blade tips, so they can't cut them. These guide rails can be as simple a piece of square plastic with tapered ends (like an octagon) painted and glued down. Despite the roadbed bumps and the blade picking problem, these turnouts look more realistic and technologycally up to date than the rest of the Kato range.

 

The #6 points are rather simple and imho the most reliable ones, but their design is a bit old, like having a big screw in the middle as a rotational point. This is exactly what the old pre finetrack Tomix turnouts looked like.

[Welshbloke]

I strongly suspect that the reason why the #4s are prone to causing stock to attempt to climb onto the point rails is that said rails have an absolutely square end. If you look at most other brands of pointwork the blades are tapered slightly, so rather than a sudden arrival they rise to meet wheels as they pass over the tip. I've filed a small taper into mine and it did seem to improve matters.

 

Flanges and tyres are tapered, so if you also taper the point blade it should come into contact with the flange at a point where there's more of a gap between it and the rail, then guide the wheelset rather than hitting it and getting pushed aside.

[cteno4]

Yes it does help! I did this on a number of them we used on the club layout for years. We did find the #4s not has hearty with the abuse of being put down, pulled up and thrown in track boxes with the build on the fly layouts over the years as the #6s.

 

If you still have troubles making the tiny pockets for the blade tip also works well, but is a bit of more fiddly work to do.

 

Jeff