Tehachapi, BC

[Chris333]

We had a 2.1 earthquake last year. The epicenter was less than a mile from my house! It was from pumping "fracking" water into a well. I was sitting on the throne when it happened 

[davefoxx]

I was sitting on the throne when it happened 

You sure that was an earthquake?   

[eric220]

@GaryHinshaw bah, 4.8? Call me when you get a real earthquake.

 

Seriously though, I'm glad everything stayed on the rails. The last perceptible earthquake we had reaulted in several cars on their sides here in the Bay Area.

[GaryHinshaw]

@GaryHinshaw bah, 4.8? Call me when you get a real earthquake.

I know, right?  Actually I am a veteran of a few Bay Area earthquakes (not Loma Prieta, thankfully) and the ones I remember were all pretty low frequency.  This one was a sharp jolt with a peak acceleration of 0.8 g in Vancouver.  It certainly made you take notice.

Time for a bit of a 2015 wrap-up: after a busy fall term at work, I've been able to get some quality time in the "shed" over the holidays.  My priority was to get my wiring to the point where I could start contemplating some scenery construction on the upper deck.  For quite some time I've been living with temporary "control panels" for controlling the upper deck turnouts, such as this one at Summit:



By now, the Sharpie lettering has worn off (and the temporary photo backdrop is looking pretty ravaged too).  The toggles were pretty hastily wired, leaving a bit of a rat's nest under the hood:



All but 3 of the upper deck turnouts have now been placed under DCC control with Motorman boards from RR-CirKits.  In parallel, I have been wiring up block detection with the Watchman boards (also RR-CirKits).  So the wiring under the hood now looks more like this:



From front (top) to back (bottom) we have:
a) The black/red wires form a 12 V DC bus for Tortoise power.  This is an input to the Motorman boards. 
b) The 12 ga bus wires under the roadbed carry track power.  To enable block detection, I had to run two additional positive (red) lines along this section to isolate the current in different blocks.  I wasn't looking forward to adding the two additional bus lines and reconfiguring bus/feeder connections, but it ended up being pretty simple.
c) The black line is the Loconet bus.
d) The green/yellow cables carry switched power from the Motorman outputs to the Tortoises.
e) The multi-colour twisted pair lines run from the Watchman board out to the various current sensing coils.

One of my great frustrations with layout building is not having all the parts I need at one time to complete a particular task.  In this case, I'm lacking enough "EZ Track" to mount the RR-CirKits boards properly, so I still have a Jerry-Rigged board installation:



(EZ Track is the modular grey channel that these boards are designed to fit into.  I have more on order.)  The Watchman board is on the left - it can monitor 8 blocks, the Motorman is in the middle - it can control 8 switch machines, and on the right is a "fan-out" board that converts flat ribbon cable from the Motorman to individual wires for the longish runs out to the Tortoises.   This will all be cleaned up when the new channel arrives.

Finally, here is a shot that gives a sense of the vision I have for controlling TBC:



Touch screen tablets will serve the control panels via jmri, and they can be either fascia mounted (this one is just mounted with twist ties for now  )  or mobile.  This shot shows the Monolith area and you can see that track #1 (the back mainline) is occupied and it shows as red on the panel.  The turnout states are also indicated on the diagram, and they can be changed by touching the schematic.   You can also easily zoom or scroll to other parts of the layout with a few swipes of your finger.  Happily this part of the system is completely wireless.

Thanks for looking, and Happy New Year!

[Santa Fe Guy]

Your wiring is too neat. Very nicely done. Liking your panel. You obviously have a liking for wiring and its associated stuff. Good work.
I really enjoy operations on my SFRSD using my CTC panels, signals and remote switching of the turnouts, it brings a whole new feel to operations. Especially when all the guys are in sync. We are now also using radios to communicate and that is also cool.
And a Happy New Year to you and all on TRW.
Rod.

[C855B]

I know, right?  Actually I am a veteran of a few Bay Area earthquakes (not Loma Prieta, thankfully)...

We missed Loma Prieta by a week, off traveling. Sinking feeling in my stomach when we saw the news, realizing only a few days earlier we were on that stretch of 880 that pancaked and the Oakland bridge. About the same time of day, too.

I did, however, ride out the Sylmar quake of '71, about 35 miles from the epicenter. First wave cracked the ceiling in my bedroom and I dove for cover under the bed, dragging the dog with me. Ceiling stayed put, fortunately.

[Kevin C]

Thanks for looking, and Happy New Year!

It is always a pleasure to follow the progress you are making on your layout Gary. Happy New Year to you. I hope you have many hours of " Training " in your layout room in 2016.

Kevin

[svedblen]

It is always a pleasure to follow the progress you are making on your layout Gary.

I agree to that. It is a treat to see your well thought through solutions coming alive.

[mark dance]

Very impressive Gary!

What are your thoughts on prototypically correct switch control, i. e. dispatcher control,  shared control, lock outs, etc?

TBC certainly adds many new operating and visual dimensions to the assortment of Vancouver area layouts.

Happy new year and best wishes to you and family (and pups!)

Md

[sp org div]

Fun to see implementation of state of the art electronics going in on your layout compared to my old school layout....
Old SE8c and BD168 boards work here, but amazing how much things have improved in a short time.
Touch screen tablets located around the layout instead of toggles?   

Im guessing he will not stop short of proto switch controls... as mention of remote DS is farther back in this thread, and that combined with CTC signaling is alot of what makes ops fun on the layout down here.
Go Gary!

Happy New Year!

Jeff
http://espeeoregondivision.blogspot.com/

[sp org div]

"By now, the Sharpie lettering has worn off (and the temporary photo backdrop is looking pretty ravaged too).  The toggles were pretty hastily wired, leaving a bit of a rat's nest under the hood:"

You flew over that a bit too quick for me... is there a page you can reference on that backdrop work?  That caught my eye right away, and struggling with backdrop ideas here now.  That looks really good just from the casual image Gary.

Jeff

[C855B]

...Im guessing he will not stop short of proto switch controls...

Huh? You mean like this?:



Gary's benchwork is strong, but probably not that strong.

[GaryHinshaw]

Thanks for the kind words gents.

You flew over that a bit too quick for me... is there a page you can reference on that backdrop work?

The start of that discussion is here.  (BTW, I've been trying to keep a somewhat up-to-date index on p.1 of this thread.)  Hard to believe that these "temporary" backdrops are almost 3 years old now!  FWIW, I have been happy with the overall impression they convey, so I'll be pretty comfortable forging ahead with a permanent installation "soon."

What are your thoughts on prototypically correct switch control, i. e. dispatcher control,  shared control, lock outs, etc?

I have been thinking about that.  jmri lets you lock out "local" control of turnouts (from a cab or push buttons), so I will have some options to work with.  What I don't know is whether or not I can lock out local (client) panels that are under jmri control, while leaving control with a dispatcher's (admin) panel.   Of course Mike's option is quite attractive too! 

[jagged ben]

... What I don't know is whether or not I can lock out local (client) panels that are under jmri control, while leaving control with a dispatcher's (admin) panel.   Of course Mike's option is quite attractive too! 

While I can't quickly tell you exactly how to do it, I'm just about positive you can do this.   Both physical buttons on the layout (that are connected to digital inputs) and buttons in your tablet panels should have sensors associated with them.  It's just a matter of locking out all the right sensors.

[GaryHinshaw]

A bit of an inauspicious start to 2016: 3 new problems cropped up in the course of a few days.  A cautionary tale about relying too much on technology...

1. About a week ago I downloaded the latest release of jmri (4.2) and it fixed a few small problems that were annoying but harmless.  It seemed to be working fine.  A few days later I made a small mod to my panel schematic: I moved the location of the crossover at "Mojave" (top of helix staging) to make things a bit clearer and now it refuses to render properly in the diagram.  Here is what it looked like a few days ago:



and today:



  The xml file that encodes this panel is storing the proper coordinates, so the problem lies in some remote corner of the rendering code.  I have posted a query to the jmri users group, but no responses as of yet.

2. jmri released 4.2.1 yesterday, for a bug fix that effects some Mac users.  I downloaded that hoping it would fix my panel problem.  It did not, but now the web server won't work (a java NullPointerException).     I suspect there is a quick fix for this.

3. Digitrax released some new firmware for their DT402 throttles and the UR92 duplex transceiver.  I updated my throttles to v1.7 with no problem.  Emboldened by this, I tried to update the UR92; it looked like the operation completed successfully, but now it is hosed.  Off to Digitrax to sort this one out...  Thankfully the plug-in throttles still work, and the WiThrottle server is fine too, so there are workarounds.

Sigh.