Need help with wiring electric gateman

That really is confusing. My issue with Lionel accessories is they do not show how the accessory works...just where to put wires and they are not very good at showing that.

Looks to me that you put the wires that are hooked up on the accessory track out of the box to the two terminals on the underside front of the house. Put the wire with the white tracer (the one that goes to the center rail with the red terminal on it) to the right side front terminal on the picture shown below. Connect the black wire with the black connector which comes from the continuous outside rail to the terminal on the left side front terminal. That will light the light.

Then connect an extra black wire from the insulated outside rail terminal under the accessory track that has no wire connected to it to the remaining rearmost left terminal on the upside down house. I assume the gateman comes out when the two black wires are connected by the truck wheels rolling over the insulated outside rail and the continuous outside rail.

If you bought the accessory wire set that's just like the set that comes hooked up to the track when you take it out of the box, then connect the remaining black wire with the white tracer to the center rail of the accessory track and then connect it to the right side front terminal where you connected the original black wire with white tracer.

This remaining black wire with the white tracer is not needed and is only mentioned and drawn on the instruction picture (and connected to the center rail) because Lionel sells the hookup wire as a pair of wires and they are putting it where it does no harm...in parallel with the black wire with the white tracer that is also hooked up to the center rail.

A thousand words where one picture of the underside of the track would have helped.

This is from the manual and the gateman comes out the side of the house facing away from us.

If I have further confused you, I'll get your post here about it and try to do a better job of it...maybe draw a picture of the underside of the accessory rail.

I appreciate the help.  I have the instructions for both the gate man and accessory activator pack, and have looked at the diagrams they show (identical to the one posted on this thread), and it still does not seem to help me.  First on the diagram, how many wires are supposed to be connected under the track?  According to the diagram, this shows 4 wires; 2 black, and 2 black with white stripe.  Yet, the instructions don't show how to hook up the 4 wires underneath...and if you were to look at the instructions on the activator pack, you will see that the instructions given previous to that diagram show how to hook up the gate man using a continuous power source, with instructions how hooking up two wires under the track; but does that same under-track wiring apply to the set-up when using track power?  The instructions leave a lot to be desired, and unfortunately, all online videos and most text instructions are providing for using constant voltage from the transformer, and NOT track power, which is what I would like to do...ugh....thanks for the help!

Yes there are four wires hooked up under the track. Two of them, one pair, are the ones that came hooked up out of the box.

Then you take another pair and hook them up to the two unused terminals roughly in the center of the track. These connectors are kind of hidden next to the plastic tabs under the track...and kind of close to a support center plastic that's kind of in the way of pushing them onto the terminals. The red connector on this extra pair (black/white tracer) goes to the center rail connector...that's in the middle of the track. The black connector (black wire) on this extra pair goes to the outside rail.

The four wires are now connected to the track. Connect the two black/white tracer wires to the upper right terminal in the picture.

Now the black wires which are connected to the two outside rails...pick one of them to be the insulated rail and connect it to the lower left terminal in the picture. And connect the remaining black wire, the one connected to the NON insulated outside rail to the upper left terminal in the picture.

Not familiar with the prebuilt wiring you bought, but here is how the postwar 145 gateman wiring needs to end up, however you get the wires from track/transformer. Hope the pic helps you a bit.

Ignore the colors of the wires in the pic - they are how we do the hook up for our train show layout. Hopefully, my words get across the information correctly. BTW - Not new info, but we use a piece of tube (like a straw) to get the wires up from the bottom of the house - put wires in straw, push straw up from bottom, then pull straw up off wires, and ready to make connections.

If you turn that picture 90 degrees clockwise, it is the same locations for the terminals as the new gatehouse.