The work continues but the progress seems slow

I had expected to have been finished the track work by now but progress has slowed. The inclines are trickier than I had first thought, and I've had to change the path some of them took too many times to count. I also added another way up and down so there could be two trains running simultaneously at any 1 time without too much interference.

I've also spent a lot of time investigating train detection to automate the layout with computer control - of course! Since I don't feel like ripping up the track to put in total power block isolation, I'm going to go with photo transistors. I also think that power tracking isn't the right way to do things - it feels like a left over from the DC days when you had to use power blocks. There's also better ways to do detection - sound, RFID, IR, etc. I think that the tech should not only show where things are (with an inch or two) but what the things are (loco ID's, etc) RFID can almost do this - the location aspect is difficult or so I'm reading. Photocell's can read this info as trains pass over if they've got the tech for it... just nothing right now unfortunately.