A bit of work this morning on the model board. Have all the hardware attached, now for some wiring…
(http://i.imgur.com/WfafG0zl.png)
And who’s going to be in charge of this…thing…??
Hey, a volunteer!
Actually, the signals will have two ways to run. One with ABS (automatic blocks), the other via the CTC panel. For the most part, Ill let it run automatically.
Board looks good, Bob…
However, why no track alert light on the sidings, such as at Williamsport???
Cool
I think you should run dads trains and let Ken and Jon run the board!
Bolt down the bricks on the sidings
Starting to get the pieces together. Here’s a test of the code for Block #1 (the track between Burke and Williamsport). I have the code written inside of JMRI, and JMRI is talking to the OpenLCB (now the LCC standard for the NMRA). It shows the three LEDs representing the signals for Block 1, and how it interacts with the block being occupied.
Bob, are you involved in the “politics” of OpenLCB? Looks interesting to me, but the information seems to have stopped in time in 2011…
oops… a little more reading and seems that there are updates to 2013…
I’d like to start this on my own layout, but want to see the dust settle first so to speak.
Greg
Not involved in the politics, but I’ve been keeping up with the project all along. The mailing list is very active, even if they haven’t really kept the public information up to date. The NMRA a couple of months ago finally accepted the standard, and named it LCC (they were pondering NMRAnet at one point).
That said, there still are only a couple of places you can buy boards right now. Tim Hatch’s TCH Technology http://www.tchtechnology.com/ (site seems to be down right now) sells production-quality boards at a reasonable price. And you can get an IO-duino Arduino/CANbus board from Railstars http://railstars.com/. I’m pondering a IO-duino + 64 port shield for IO, and a IO-duino + XBee for places I dont want to run CAT5.
I’m thinking that soon, there will be more companies making boards, since its now an accepted standard, like what happened when DCC was finally adopted.
I see you are using ribbon cable. I have a large box of old flat printer cables and drive cables that I was going to chuck in the trash. Should I bring them up to TrainOps for you?
Daktah John said:
I see you are using ribbon cable. I have a large box of old flat printer cables and drive cables that I was going to chuck in the trash. Should I bring them up to TrainOps for you?
No, I have a ton of it, too. Plus his new boards are available with screw terminals.
A bit of work on the first node of the signaling system. For those of you familiar with my layout, this will cover the four blocks starting at Burke, through Williamsport, and ending at the switch to Pearce. I have the DCC bus and detection working, mostly. At least, its throwing logic correctly when I put a load on one of the to-track connectors. Next up is wiring the input side of things (detectors to the LCC node), and then the wiring for the signals. Baby steps.
Sheesh, the cabinet that hold’s all my FIOS equipment doesn’t look that complicated…(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)
Worked a bit on un-winterizing the railroad this weekend. This past fall I had set out various signal ideas to see how they weather. None of my ideas so far fared well. Plastic and/or resin cracked, glues came unglued, and some wiring failed. Ill probably have to resort to all dwarf style signals, but some of that will be using metal fab skills I dont currently have. Stay tuned.
The best ones to use probably would have been Shiloh’s signals but he is not around anymore. They were all brass built. The plastic ones you mention are they ones you made yourself or any particular brand?
All ones I’ve made myself. The reason I wanted to make myself was strictly price and look. The Shilohs were nice, but they were 1:29/1:32, so looked VERY small for my RR. And at $30-$40 a piece, it’d be over $1000 for the signals I’d need for the RR.
TCHTechnology does not seem to be around anymore.
http://www.hugedomains.com/domain_profile.cfm?d=tchtechnology&e=com
Bob; Lawrence Watkins started trying to fabricate simple signals, using electric conduit parts. Although not to scale, and on the large size, they don’t look too bad. He had a problem getting LED’s bright enough to be seen in bright daylight, and sort of gave up.
Along came Steve Watson and his wife Seana, taking over as leads on the project, and trying to use automotive LED’s. They are available in Red, Green, and amber. They have made two test samples, which work great, can be easily seen by the operators, are very inexpensive, and should be very weather proof, along with being very durable.
We are going for simple two headed signals, with red and green heads. I hope someone will take pictures soon so I can show you.
The cables to activate the signals are now in place, and the small power supplies are on hand.
A three headed signal could easily be built, if we need it.
As I have mention on many occasions; these signals are not to just “Look pretty”. They are to actually be used for part of the operation, as a dispatcher controlled fixture.
Fred Mills
Yea, I’ve looked at conduit pull corners, but they are way too large to look good. I need something about half that size.
Bob McCown said:
Yea, I’ve looked at conduit pull corners, but they are way too large to look good. I need something about half that size.
What you need is a pulling L
http://www.cesco.com/b2c/product/Carlon-E990D-1-2-PVC-PULL-ELBOW/334786