2024/2025 Update

Welcome back! I've not posted for some time, I owe you some updates.

I guess the first thing is, why did the updates stop? About 4-6 months ago I finished the bulk of major construction, so I'm no longer running at the pace I was. However, for the last 7 months or so, that I've been chipping away at a few projects, mainly specific to operations:

I have added a miniature electric staff system between Kiama, Berry and Nowra using RFID tokens. More information about this will come in a seperate post.

Initial setup of the staff machines at Berry.

I've continued to refine STS in handling freight traffic flow on the layout:

I've extended STS to work with loading and unloading wagons with RFID tags:

Container is placed on the loader (Left) and the status of the container is displayed on the tablet. The button would turn green if the container is ready for loading.

I've refined the operating schedule to hopefully make the next shakedown session for operations flow much better. This has included the creation of a train graph, and a call board:

Current schedule. This is on an 8:1 fast clock which is primarily used for control departure times. Not there is no more than two trains in Nowra/Shoalhaven starches at any one time.

I've added some additional staging yard capacity in the Staging Balloon Loop. This will hold trains that run from one end to another, and will need to be turned manually before the next session. I'm going to re-work the CATS panel to show the roads out of staging to be bidirectional at some point for any EMU/DMUs that may shuttle in/out of these roads during a session:

Ballast and Kembla Heights jobs stabled in the new staging roads.

Hopefully will do a few more deep-dive posts on some things I've mentioned in this post soon.