Kato track - DCC?

[barney121e]

Hi all

I have a fair bit of Kato unitrack and thinking of doing a layout with it. Just wondering if anyone can tell me if I can do DCC on it, and if so how?

Any advice most welcome.

[Bufferstop]

Track is ok you just need to know what sort of points they are. If you use droppers and insulated rail joiners on the points it won't matter..

[Ironduke]

Kato Unitrack is fine with DCC.
They have live frogs but the frog switching is built-in to the mechanism so no need to fuss with insulated joiners or juicers.
Like any other track, you will need to put power feeds into any siding you want live all the time but you don't need a large number of power feeds all over the layout because the joiners are made to be robust and maintain good conductivity. Just power each section. You can buy the power feed track or buy power feed joiners or just make your own power feed joiners if you're any good at soldering.
The main difference is that the points motors use 2 wires and require special accessory decoders if you want to control them using DCC.

• DCC Concepts make a 3 wire to 2 wire adaptor circuit for them.
• Digtrax make a single decoder that can be hidden inside the point (and no need for extra wires)
• and NCE make the Switch-Kat

[Ironduke]

you will need to put power feeds into any siding you want live all the time

An afterthought, #4 turnouts can be set to either isolate the siding or leave it live all the time. #6 turnouts do not, they always isolate the divergent track when they are closed.