Build Progress - 12/23

Well, another year down. I dragged a photo out of the same time last year, and I've definitely made some headway!

Anyway, this is what got done this month:

Nowra yard trackage is now complete.

I also ran a new bus wire to this area, and split the upper level bus into 2 segments - one for the main, and one for Nowra/Manildra.

Previously I had it wired it in with the rest of the layout, and naturally during wiring a section I proceeded to short out the whole layout which was a pain to troubleshoot. It was on the list to do but that forced my hand.

I've also seperated the helix into its own isolated section, I may end up putting a detector there as well.

The future site of Kembla Heights got some renewed attention. I've modified the track plan for at least the 4th time now, but this time I've gone into it wanting the ability to have passenger services in and out of that area, without interrupting operators in the yard.

With this area kinda-sorta now locked in, I updated the dispatcher panel:

I also ended up adding the track south of Kiama. My intent here is to allow the dispatcher to allocate blocks to trains, and move the train describer along the panel indicating their current location. The section will be interlocked with a staff-machine and not be on the panel, but having this visual will hopefully assist the dispatcher when managing traffic.

With the impending start of Kembla Heights, my attention turned to the tunnel. As I have electrified trains I will be running catenary to Kiama. As the pans will touch the tunnel roof, I've had to install a fixed wire (in this case some left over rail) to avoid hangups. This was done using leftover PCB glued to the roof, and the rail soldered in place.

During the month I also moved Berry to the western wall of the shed. Thinking about the safeworking process I realised Berry and Bomaderry are one corner away from each other, so the process of exchanging staffs to move about 2 metres seemed a bit silly.

This entire section is on a grade, so I've had to flatten out the area just before the centre pillar of the shed. Whilst it means a steeper grade coming out towards Nowra, 6 axle power and 25 wagons has no issue with it. There is now a semi-decent run through to Nowra and given its on the opposite end of the shed, once the backscenes are up along the peninsula hopefully it helps seperate the scenes to some extent.

Manildra Yard has also been started this month. I start with printing out the plan, and this gives me a bit of a general direction of where things should be. At present I've mapped out the track, and am working on laying cork. Hopefully will be done before the end of the year, but wiring ends up being the most tedious/time consuming part of the process.

I also installed the first PCB Signals on the layout. I've described these in more detail [here](http://illawarraline.net/path-to-post) and hope to order some more in the New Year, and make my way through each town installing them.

I ended up doing a couple of extra little things to close out the year:

Installed the break-beam sensors as a test. This was an alternate approach to end-of-block detection rather than sensors under the track, and I'm quite happy with how they've turned out. Where I've had tight track clearences, I've removed the casing. I'm not overly concerned about the appearance as this is all in staging.

In addition, I built a panel and setup JMRI Dispatcher. I was able to successfully dispatch trains in and out of staging once I figured out the logic, and once the rest of the end-of-block sensors are in I expect this will work quite well for what I need it to. The panel has evolved since this screenshot to look more like a CATS panel, am unsure if the dispatcher or a seperate role will handle staging during sessions.

That's about it for December, I'll take 2 weeks off shortly after Christmas and then hopefully get some time to complete Manildra and Kembla Heights before the end of January. Whilst there are still a few cards on the board, once the major track work is done and I start working on some of the smaller things, will be inching closer to that first operating session.