Slowing down and its not age related...

Its November.  Last post was July.  Have I done anything?  sure.  couple things.  Had a baby (well I didn't, but my wife and I did.  I'll share credit.  I'm big that way).  Modelling-wise, sure haven't done much it seems.  Let's see what's been done the last few months -

Redesign -

Took out the big Vaughn yard (Vaughan if you spell it correctly!) ,  old and new trackplans pasted here to compare and contrast !  The new is labelled Phase I



Added a helix to the design, the upper deck with be Phase II

Removed the "Waterloo" portion as an intact section that will be re-used on the upper deck.  I really liked my track work and couldn't face destroying it.  This also allowed me to spray paint the track to see what that looks like.  Looks great, just not sure if black or brown worked better.  Did the mainline black, spurs and sides as brown.

Put the light sensors wiring from the BIX to the sensing boards.  I wanted three sensors in parallel for each trigger but have to get enough of the same sensors.

Ordered some LED's and such from Hong Kong, thank you Ebay!  Tried various connectors to make things neat and tidy.  That's still very much a work in progress, as are my panels. Still not sure, ultimately, what my panels will look like, but I've got some cool chrome bezels for the LED's and some black flat ones if the chrome are a little too much.

Put down some track for the Brampton area

Ordered some of the Kato Maxi-IV's, might get the I's as well.

Trying to build a transfer table, having a tough time with the alignment.

Can't think of anything else, at this point.  More to come but in the meantime thanks for reading.

Stalled, like an original VW in an intersection

Its been a few weeks of on and off again work, though the term "work" is being optimistic.  More of a puttering and fussing than work.

The frustration is from the last minute change in the room size/planning.  The old layout plan -above- had a return behind a wall into a spare bedroom.  This was going to also be a helix and staging yard in phase II of the build.  That's been scraped as my wife decided the bedroom is a no go area now.  So now I have to re-design which is causing me a lot of indecision.

Here's the current state of the layout, below.  Bench work is all built; however, modifications could be done.  The KW (Kitchener Waterloo) section is complete.  Don't really want to rip it all up as, I think, I did a pretty awesome job with the trackwork this time around.

Thoughts on a future plan -

• not putting the Vaughan yard in - more scenic and a few towns
• A "nolix" or no helix design.  Simply put, that means a 2 to 2.5% grade up and back to try to get to 12" higher than KW level, but on the Vaughan side.  Just realized I spelt Vaughan incorrectly in the picture.  "an" vs "n"
• Staging would be underneath the 12" higher Vaughan side
• Could use a tight helix by expanding the Maple benchwork to 30", using a 13.5 or 14" radius in the helix, then go up 16 or 18".  This would be instead of the 'no lix', allowing greater height

I guess my new givens would be -

• staging
• dramatic (tall) bridge scenes
• escarpment terrain with imposing cliff faces... this kinda goes with the bridge idea
• a few GO or Via Rail passenger stations
• a couple industries for a bit of switching interest
• two levels.

so until I figure out the new layout plan, I'm sitting in a non-motivated, uninspired funk.  

Just working the rails

I've actually had some good time to work on the trains this past week and weekend.  Got a ton of track put down.  Feeling good but, of course, my lovely wife has thrown a huge wrench into the gears with a change of plans on where the layout can go!  More on that later.

So my progress report -

Screwed down the KW side of the layout.  Which sounds easy, but was a bit mental fight as I have the electronics drawer underneath it.  Access going forward is limited to the front two thirds.  Which, if I planned correctly should be fine.  The back third of the drawer is power distro, the Digitrax chief, my PR-3 and a bit of the TC-64.  There's no looking back now !

With the help of my 3 year old son, got a lot done.  He enjoyed using the tweezers to pick up small objects, not so much with the actual help.  Small steps, small steps !

I completed the entire KW yard, and Waterloo is connected to it.  Picture is above.  Added a couple notes about what's going where, possibly.  The only definite is the KW Station in the yard.  This will service GO Transit and VIA Rail.

Notice my mainline is elevated from the spurs and yard.  Got this idea from everyone else...

KW yard to the left, storage and roundabout tracks to the right

Connection from Waterloo to KW is the middle line, the engine is on  the Elmira spur

Of course with all the track work down it allowed me to test it out.  Have to add a few more power feeders, less than I thought actually.  It all seemed to work pretty well.   Next step is to wire up all the servo's and then watch for derailments with my most finicky cars.

Next blog will go into the big change of plans !

Track work and Electronics

So I'm using a proto freelanced approach to Southern Ontario on the CP Rail lines.  Its difficult for me to actually nail down what Cities I want to model... and they'll be more representational than prototypical.   Of course most of what I'm choosing to model are actually on CN Rail lines but... well, I like CP more.  Though I might try to have a bit of CN traffic later... they do have some really nice models..

On my list - for this week - are

• Kitchener Yard and Via/GO Station, with a couple industries (maybe could be Cambridge for the factories?)
• Waterloo industry; really just wanted to get The Brick Brewery and Seagrams !
• Vaughn Inter-modal and general yard.  CP's major inter-modal is the Vaughn but I wanted other general stuff too. 
• Maple Via/GO station - I needed a station after Vaughn, so chose Maple.  No reason really, its at least got a bit of history to it.  
• St Thomas - can't do anything train related without a mention of it.  'sides the kids love Thomas and the travelling show comes here.

I flip flop on KW (Kitchener Waterloo) or using Brampton and Mississauga.  There's a nice small yard near work here for CP Rail in Mississauga, and Brampton is where I live and has some interesting industries which includes Bacardi Rum.  You might notice the number and importance of brewers in my model rail road.  Coincidence I think.  

That's the planning part - which is sort of independent of the trackplan.  I know it shouldn't be but that would be the freelanced aspect of my approach!  

Here's the track plan with a few cities on it so far.  I'll be detailing it up a bit more as I make up my mind on what's where.

That's all the planning and what not.  Here's what I've worked on.  Did the track area from St. Thomas to Waterloo, and then all the spurs in Waterloo. 

Put in the servo's for the switches on a Tam Valley Quad.  Wired up and worked it out.  There's a few ways for servo's to be mounted now, but I tried out the brass tube method.  First one was easy easy easy.  Damned if the next ones made me almost resort to my old methods!  what a pita (pain in the ass) installation.  But I persevered and finished them - except one but it has its own challenges.  That particular one is resting on a support so things have to be moved and will take a bit more thought.  

In my previous layout I discovered that the Quad could get out of sync with JMRI's control panel.  That is to say, when you pressed the physical panel button it didn't update JMRI's panel with that info.  Naturally the question is - how would it?  the Quad could put it out on the DCC bus but I don't believe that's allowed, and it doesn't use the Loconet.  So I originally thought of using the Tower Controller 64 for this purpose, that and getting sensors on the Loconet as well.  The TC-64 has 64 input/outputs that can send / receive info.  The Quad can put out TTL levels on its expansion pins (one of the reasons I like the Quad so much) that the TC-64 can interpret and then pass that info to JMRI.

So I tested it out, finally.  It worked.  Here's the incredible easy how - and at about $8 bucks per Quad its very inexpensive.

So now I have my JMRI panel switches being updated by the Quads, via the TC-64.  With some fuzzy logic, sensors and this info I can probably figure out what tracks are occupied without sensors everywhere.  I'm using the light sensors from Rob P as mentioned in my past posts.  They're inexpensive and awesome.  Not as polished a product as Tam Valley but, then again, not the same price tag either.

So that's what I've been working on for the past couple weeks! 

Continued Fun

Finding time to work on the trains seems to be difficult this season.  The kids, 3 years old, both want to help... yes twins, boy and girl, if you're stuck on the why 1 age...  but don't really contribute too much except a lot of excitement (some unwanted when they get interested in things they shouldn't)

So not making too much progress but here's what's happened these last couple weeks -

Because every layout needs a comfy chair !

More bench work construction.  Putting in the small pieces for hidden track. Ran power cables, re-used the old stuff.  Labelled it better this time around.

Found some junk server rails at work so I re-purposed them to make a slide out drawer.  Figure these can hold, oh, about 150 to 200 lb's extended to 3 feet, so probably *ok* for me leaning on it.  Learned a lot about drawers and being square.  yikes.  But it works, maybe not as smoothly as I'd like but its pretty good.   I'm going to use this as my "backwall" in Telco speak.  So all the electronics will feed in and out of here.  Except the Tam Valley Quad's that need to be near to their panels... or do they?!  they do because of the allowable cable distance for the button.  I'm going to see if I can't Macgyver something so I can put the quad's on the drawer.

Note the planned booster positions.  Track power is above

Power to left, sensors to the right

Note the use of some old BIX blocks on the right (like AT&T 110 blocks but the Nortel / Canadian version) for my sensors connections to the TC-64 loconet converter.  I'm using some photo sensors in serial, so 3 or 4 per detection section.  Each has two leads, 1 goes to a common, the other to an input on the detection board.  With currently 16 sections, that's a possible 64 little wires inter-connected.  A real mess... then one day as I was punching down dial tone at work, I had a eureka moment.  I use telephone wire (24 awg) to all the sensors, so this would be a perfect solution to keep it organized and neat.  Also changes are a breeze.

Due to the sheer number of Quad's to drive servers, I'm anticipating two boosters.  I've got one from Tam Valley and its beautiful.  Very professional, like all of the Tam Valley stuff.

I also have a DCC specialties PSX-AC that some day, I'm sure, I'll use.  That would go here as well.

Yeehaw !  first track down !

Managed to get some track installed.  This would be the hidden loop that will be underneath things.  So had to get it completed first.  Wired up with power.

Which, really, was just an excuse to test it.  Meaning I could runs trains for the first time in 6 months!

Another New beginning

Recent zoning changes within the house have relegated the trains to the newly vacated basement apartment.  Mixed feelings on the big change at the time - but now I'm just excited to re build with all the lessons learned fresh in my head.

This happened back around January, so its been some months of dismantling, storing and now, rebuilding.

What's been done so far -

Total tear down, clean up and salvaging (if possible) of the old room

Storage of trains and rolling stock (which is heartbreaking looking at them in their boxes, so lonely and sad !) .  How long until they run again !?!?

all wiring coiled and stored

all electrical components stored.

first level of the new bench work is almost complete, working on a double level layout so its a little more complicated than I've ever tried before.