I've got a friend with one of these. (I know next to nothing about them). Do these come "insulated". I.E. When he was running his train from one loop to another (with feeder wires on only one loop) and tried to cross a train over, it died. Does the Kato Unitrack "X-type" crossover come withe the two mainlines isolated form each other? How does one remedy that? Thanks.
Don't know exactly without seeing how the crossover is wired. ..... each side of the double crossover is electrically isolated. To get the double crossover to work properly you must drop a set of feeders from each leg of the double crossover to your common bus lines. ...... On my two I had to cut an insulation gap on each outer rail ( at the exact center of the turnout) as I had mine wired for four districts. I suspect your friend will have to at least drop the feeders. Al
The Kato crossover is gapped and isolated, as it should be, to prevent shorts....feeders need to be supplied from all 4 points/tracks leading into the crossover... ~Bruce
Kato built it's 4 way crossover switch with analog DC, Cab A and Cab B in mind. They didn't want one shorting out the other. It is a four way gap internally. On mine because I have a reversing loop on one leg of the switch I had to add in some additional isolation cuts. More on that later if anyone needs to know how. Most Kato switches are good to go as is. You need to wire in feeder wires on each leg out from the crossover. Also, note that for those fine folks that like to wire in the frog to a reversing DPDT...this is already done for you. Some mighty fine features with the Kato switches. Well thought out and engineered. I have analog DCC wired in Cab A and Cab B, and with the flip of a DPDT toggle I can switch Cab B over to DCC. Everything performs as it should. Did I mention how great it is to run a train through the 4 way crossover switches, minus the derailments, that usually accompany most switches. Nice! Slickest installation there is.
The n-scale Kato Unitrak double crossover can be operated with out DCC. Locomotives will only run successfully if there is a DCC source to feed all four ends. The DCC lead does not have to be immediately at the double crossover, it just needs to feed signal. I still operate my turnouts from a Kato transformer, not DCC.
