Another few weeks with no visible progress on the GDP Lines, in fact the spare bedroom still has the bed and dresser in it. However, I have been learning a lot and getting a lot of the planning and "systems engineering" of the layout done.
First up is automating operating session prep, I took a long hard look at ProTrak for generating traffic, waybills, switchlists and so on. It is very realistic and looks like good software but it was not flexible enough for the way I want to operate, not to mention that I'd rather the money went for an Athearn Challenger or two. Since I know a thing or two about programming, I started on my own software for generating waybills and switchlists. The first go at it was something of a failure, so I have begun designing take two. The general idea is that given a starting situation (cars in trains in staging, cars on spurs or in yards) the software will generate waybills for each car that also happens to put the cars mostly in proper block order on the staged trains coming into the main yard. I should probably explain this requirement better. After an operating session, there will be a number of trains in staging, those trains will re-enter during the next operating session. When those trains re-enter, all the cars need new waybills and need to be properly blocked (with an occasional human error exception thrown in). Additionally, the software will randomly bad-order cars providing a little realistic headache for the yard crew.
On another software front I have been looking at automating train control for bringing trains onto the visible sections from staging and vis versa. For the times that I am the only operator this allows trains to come into the yard and leave the yard without interupting me (the yard crew) beyond pulling off the propers and locals and tacking on the outbound block of cars. I will be using JMRI as the software base. I still need to figure out how I will do train location detection and automatic uncoupling.
In the physical modeling department - Jake's recent forum posts (here and here) on cardboard structures has inspired me to give cardboard a try. I tend to eat Mini-Wheats when I get the muchies instead of chips, so I have a plentiful supply of useful cardboard. I decided to start off with the simplest structure I am planning on for the layout, the scale house. Since I am in experimental mode and supplies are dirt cheap, I have been working on technique rather than trying to get a good model. I came across a promising technique for doing wood siding involving cutting strips of 20# bond paper to scale board size and gluing them on to the building. I still need to work out of few bits to make it look right, but 20# bond paper is scale 5/8" thickness. Pics coming soon.
The last thing I have been working on is planning the electrical runs. 14 ga wire for the power bus, 22 ga for feeders, with lots of connections. I will be using 3M IDCs to break out the feeders from the main bus. Mouser Electronics has lots of IDCs, and ordering from them is no different than ordering from your favorite online hobby supplier. DCC will be by Digitrax since that seems to have the best interface to JMRI and my LHS is an authorized dealer.
All righty then, I need to get back to work on the cardboard buildings right now. A trip to the lumberyard is on tap for tomorrow, and hopefully I'll find my digital camera tomorrow as well. (It's in one of these boxes...I hope!)
Remember, look both ways before crossing the tracks, you might want to stick around to watch the train.
