I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve answered questions such as, “how do I wire up my layout”, “how do I plug in the powerpack”, “can I use a Kato powerpack with Atlas track”, “can I use some other powerpack with my Kato Unitrack”, and various others.
Rather than continuing to type up the answers over and over and over again, I figured it’s probably worth documenting it clearly once and then just referring people to this page going forward.
Where possible, I’ve provided links to the manufacturer’s websites below. Before ordering direct, I’d suggest supporting your local hobby shop, as you may get it faster and without shipping costs, and some retailers actually offer some products below the manufacturer’s suggested retail price.
Kato DC Powerpack
If you already have a Kato Powerpack (which is a good DC powerpack, by the way), here’s what’s I’d do.
First, grab yourself one of their splitters. They make a few different varieties. Any of them will do. Depending on the size of your layout, you may end up needing a few. For now, let’s start with one.
- Kato 24-827 – 3-Way Extension Cord (older blue box style) – Believed to be discontinued by Kato
- Kato 24-833 – 3-Way Extension Cord (newer string style) – Missing from Kato USA website
- Kato 28-930 – 5-Way Extension Cord (newer string style) – https://store.katousa.com/product/product-245/
You can plug these into each other to give you more connections if you wish. I’ve daisy-chained 3 or 4 together without any issues, although you probably want to look at a more permanent solution at that point.
Alright, with that in hand, now you want to think about how you’re hooking up to your track.
If you are 100% Kato Unitrack, you have an option between feeder track and track joiners:
- Kato 20-041 – Feeder Track – https://store.katousa.com/product/product-74/
- Kato 20-043 – Double Feeder Track – https://store.katousa.com/product/product-76/
- Kato 24-818 – Terminal UniJoiners – https://store.katousa.com/product/product-228/
With the feeder track, you MUST incorporate that track section into your layout somewhere. It’s also important to note that the cable only plugs in one way, so your only option to control polarity is to turn the piece of track around so it’s facing the other direction.
With the Terminal UniJoiners, you can just remove the small gray track joiners between ANY two pieces of track and replace them with the ones provided. This gives you maximum flexibility when it comes to controlling polarity.
I prefer the Terminal UniJoiners, but at the end of the day, they both work about the same.
You can use one, the other, or both, but make sure that you ALWAYS keep the polarity the same! It’s a good idea to determine now which wire goes toward you, and which one goes away from you. Keep it consistent, and you shouldn’t short out the tracks.
(For those familiar with the T-TRAK modular standard, this ties back to the “BWWB” – or “blue-white-white-blue” – that everyone is always talking about when discussing T-TRAK wiring.)
If you have other types of tracks and you want to attach feeders, you’re probably best-off grabbing one of the Kato extension cords, cutting off the “track” end (not the “powerpack” end), and then splicing them in with whatever track feeders you wire into your track.
- Kato 24-825 – DC Extension Cord – https://store.katousa.com/product/product-229/
Atlas makes pre-wired track feeder joiners that do work well with other types of tracks. Just note that some have two black wires, which can make it very easy to short out your layout if you aren’t careful.
- Atlas 2092 – Code 55 Terminal Joiners – https://shop.atlasrr.com/p-1302-n-code-55-terminal-joiners.aspx
- Atlas 2539 – Code 80 Terminal Joiners – https://shop.atlasrr.com/p-1044-n-scale-code-80-terminal-joiners.aspx
- Atlas 2491 – True-Track Terminal Joiners – https://shop.atlasrr.com/p-1258-n-true-track-terminal-joiner-1-pr.aspx
Other DC Powerpack
If you’re planning on using Kato Unitrack with another brand of DC powerpack (or even a DCC powerpack), you’ll need to come up with some way to interface track power with the power output on the powerpack.
Thankfully, Kato does make an adapter cable to handle any screw-down terminal style powerpack. You could easily adapt it for just about anything else by cutting off the screw-down terminals and attaching your own connection.
- Kato 24-843 – Power Pack Adapter Cord – https://store.katousa.com/product/product-239/
