Build Progress - 01-02/24

Build Progress - 01-02/24

January was a very light month of work, namely cause I was away for 3 weeks. So onto February!

Some things I did:

  • Built the remaining turnouts needed for the layout, including another curved turnout for the junction into Nowra and Manildra yard. After building about 20 odd #6 turnouts, this one was actually really easy.
  • With these now done my attention turned to completing Manildra Yard:

Once it was completed I shuttled a train through the yard tracks to simulate the loading/unloading process. Fortunately a little bit of forward planning paid off, and a full length train in staging can easily be placed into the 3 roads, leaving one spare. The loader itself will be further back towards the curve around to the left, and each cut of cars will by cycled through.

Now obviously during an Operating Session, just pretending to move cars through a loader is a little boring. So am hoping to make it more interesting by integrating RFID.

My idea here is that each car will be virtually 'loaded' by me at the start of a session. A train will be brought down to the yard, and broken up. Each cut of cars will then be passed through the loader, where an RFID reader will read the number of the car. This will read out on a touch screen the car number, and show the car is LOADED. The operator clicks an unload button, maybe a sound plays/gauge on the screen goes to 0. Something to make the process (which is repetitive to some degree) more interactive, and have a bit more purpose.

Here's a video of the RFID reader in action. I found a way that someone was able to use UART debug messages in ESPHome to output values to a text sensor. So I can take this further with MQTT/etc eventually when I get around to it.

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During February I also had the guys over from our local group to run some trains. Fortunately the layout ran well, and we had one of those scenarios where necessity breeds innovation.

2 days out from the meeting one of the guys came down with COVID. Not wanting to have him miss out, we tried our hand at remote dispatch:

  • Remote into my layout PC using Parsec to access the panel
  • Use a Zello Radio in the layout room for comms, and have him on an ipad/iphone with the Zello app
  • Have a shared google docs sheet to track the trains running.
  • There was only 2 signals on the layout, so we had to use verbal authority in most cases.

Overall it went pretty well given the circumstances. Some stuff didn't really work:

  • Some rollingstock had no resistor wheelsets, so occasionally turnouts got thrown while cars were passing over.
  • The spreadsheet didn't really work as I thought it would - was tedious for me to manage.

But given we pulled it together in 2 days, I'm glad it worked out and everyone had a good time.

Speaking of Signals.. Whilst I was away on holiday, I found some time to work on the PCB designs to cover the signals for Bombo and Kemira Junction. On the last week I placed an order, and they were waiting for me when I got back:

These have a slightly different LED design for the main head compared to the originals, due to a component no longer being available.

One of the last things started in February was the extension of Kemira Heights loop. Talking to the guys from our local group I started to warm to the idea of extending this loop as it meant we could cross full length freight trains on the layout rather than hidden in staging. Given this is a location that doesn't exist in the real world, I could make it as long as I like! So that's what I did:

That's about it for February. Chipping away at things, and a meetup on one of the Fridays gave me the push I needed to close out more of these jobs on the layout.