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. 

I'm still stumbling slowly forward.