Railmaster control of Kato Turnouts

[Colpatben]

First and foremost I am an N Gauge modeller who is starting to ‘Experiment’ with basic automation.

I have an Elite controller and a track plan using Kato track and Turnouts.

I have downloaded the evaluation version of Railmaster V1.68 for practice and have placed an order with Hattons for an R8144 CD that I assume will have the licence activation key.

Why it is Railmaster only £5.00, are Hornby (or Invicto Systems Ltd.) no longer going to support it?

My Layout needs two Auto Reversers so I have also ordered again from Hattons 2 No. R8238 DCC reverse loop control module at £12.00 each.

Again why are they so cheap as I have read that they work well, but that they are a discontinued product. Is there an imminent replacement or are Hornby abandoning this sector of the DCC market?

Notwithstanding the above I expect that in their current (relatively cheap form) this combination will work tolerably well.

 

My biggest problem and the one I most need the answer to is to find a suitable accessory decoder to operate the Kato inbuilt Bi-polar solenoids.

For those uncertain as to what this means, Kato Turnout have a bi-polar solenoid operate by applying a single pulse 12v DC supply +ve / -ve for Normal Operation and this supply is a reversed single pulse –ve / +ve for Thrown Operation i.e. 2 wires only and the polarity reversed. Kato recommend NOT to use a CDU.

Now the majority of Turnout motors and hence accessory decoders work on 3 wires either energising two solenoids one for Normal and one for Thrown using a CDU for extra ‘Oomph’. Or reversing slow action motors such as Tortoise.

So this rules out the Hornby R8247, interestingly this is not so heavily discounted so I hope that Hornby is not going to completely abandon DCC controllers.

One option that is mentioned elsewhere on the Forum is the DCC Concepts ADS8fx and the 3 wire to 2 wire adapter, any comments or other suggestions?

[96RAF]

This is previous discussion on the subject

 

https://www.hornby.com/uk-en/forum/newby-on-the-block/?p=1

 

Have a look at this fairly old external thread but no doubt the kit is still available.

 

http://www.jnsforum.com/community/topic/2935-dcc-control-of-kato-unitrack-points/

 

And there is this

 

http://nrmrc.org/sites/default/files/publications//electrical_control_of_unitrack_turnouts.pdf

 

Then its a case of looking to see if RM supports those acc decoders.

Rob

[westernwill]

I run both OO and N gauge layouts using RM/Elink and RM/Elite with KATO track and points.

 

I use the Digitrax DS64 point decoder for all my points and they work perfectly with Elite and Railmaster/Elink.

 

Easy to set up as they are the self-learning type so you can set the addresses away from where you need them and then just wire up.

 

According to the documentation they can also operate from a booster although I have found no need for this.

[westernwill]

I also have 4 of the Hornby Reverse Loop Modules, 2 on each of my layouts and they work absolutely fine.

[Chrissaf]

Just to point out that the DCC Concepts DCD-SDC 3 wire to 2 wire convertor. Is a fairly basic circuit and should work with any 3 wire solenoid based Accessory Decoder (as long as it is common positive - I can't say that I have ever come across an AD that wasn't common positive). Thus if you already have 3 wire decoders, you can use the DCD-SDC without having to purchase a DCC Concepts ADS8fx decoder.

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Extract below from the DCD-SDC product pages on the DCC Concepts web site.

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The SDC is a clever wee device that takes the outputs from a 3-wire accessory decoder and turns them into a 2-wire reversing DC decoder, allowing you to use most solenoid accessory decoders to power Kato, Cobalt or other brands

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Note: if using the DCD-SDC convertor to drive a 'stall' type point motor, then you will need an Accessory Decoder with a configurable output on time (preferably with an 'always on' option) such as the Hornby R8247.