An afternoon in Rems

There wasn't much water in the river. 

I like the many tones of green.

I never quite realized that his house on Hegnacher Strasse has this bridge mural.

Friendly company on this walk.

Swiss Accuracy

A train is not "about 15 minutes" late in Zurich. It's about fourteen minutes late. And we left pretty much exactly at 15:24...

Eurowest 2011 BEMO Layout

This is a narrow gauge modular layout usually shown at the annual ETE Eurowest show. The lighting in the exhibition area was very bad, so the video came out a bit dark.

Haltbarmacherei

I love the name of these guys. Seen in Zurich.

Thinking of Transit agencies as Welfare Providers ... Really?

The Transport Politic has an interesting discussion about how to look at transit agencies and their respective subsidies. I'm disappointed by the conclusion of looking at transit agencies as welfare providers. Though, it is reality in today's America.

While it's not quite in the american psyche to consider transit as a viable alternative to the car, in the end change comes down to a chicken and egg problem, both in terms of supply and demand, as well as mind set both of planners and users.

Routes planned for today's usage pattern of the poor rarely encourage new users from more affluent neighborhoods. Placing transit stations on the median of freeways tells you something about the relative appreciation of transit users. Poorly timed transfers between transit agencies, and/or disparate fare systems, make using transit very inefficient, and yield nonsense like monster-long urban bus routes (e.g. in San Jose, Route 68 from Gilroy to Milpitas, or Route 22 from Palo Alto to Eastridge).

Furthermore, the true cost of daily automobile subsidies (yes, building roads costs money, too) and their relative cost to society (e.g. traffic accidents) is rarely discussed, and mentioned in the blog post only in passing.

However, I have very little hope that views on this topic will ever change in America. A clean, efficient, and fast public transportation system would be nice, and I'd use it. I guess my only option to experience that (again) would be to move back to Europe.

Traveling ... again

"I'll go back to the engine and see what's going on ..."

I stumbled over the railroadradio.net Web site a while ago. This is a collection of various radio receivers across the country and Canada providing audio streams of the communication between locomotive engineers and their respective dispatchers. The link above goes directly to the Caltrain page, which is a very busy railroad, so there are a lot of conversations going on. The sound quality of the radio transmissions varies a lot, some are extremely clear, others are choppy and very hard to understand.

On a late Tuesday evening one can hear three active trains: southbound 194 and 196, as well as northbound 197. One hears the engineers announcing arrival at stations, asking and getting track authority, as well as more unusual stuff like setting blue flag protection at San Jose Diridon, people walking on the tracks, or an engine failure of train 197 in Redwood City. "I'll go back to the engine and see what's going on there". 10 minutes later he comes back on, reports that "HEP is down, but the main engine is running again" and then asks for authority to proceed to San Francisco with the engine doors open. The HEP (head-end power generator) provides power for the cars. I.e. 197 is currently running dark with no lights, or air conditioning in the cars.

Danny Macaskill at Ayshire Railway Preservation

Well  worth the time to watch the whole thing.

Kicker scenes:

• balancing on a rail, ... and jumping to the other 
• jumping on top of roof supports
• riding on a crane steel wire

Effect of Cleaning Solar Panels

Saturday Pascal and I cleaned the solar panels. I was curious if there's a measurable effect of the cleaning. Conveniently enough, I have data to look at.

Here's the SolarGuard graph from Friday (which is quite typical for last week), a nicely shaped curved that closely follows light intensity over the day. We're topping out at ~1.3kWh around 14:00.

Here's the graph from Saturday. Starts out quite similar, ... 11:00 - 12:00 the sky was a bit overcast, so there's a drop in production, but when the sun fully came out again after 13:00 our production shot up to peak at just under 1.5kWh.

... and that wasn't a fluke as the graph from yesterday shows:

So, for us it's worth it to clean the panels once during the dry season. Over the winter we get enough strong rainfall to wash off dust and dirt.

Hungry rat causes short circuit at Stuttgart Hbf

Wow, this is hilarious. A hungry rat decided to munch on cables that power platform lights at Stuttgart Hbf plunging the main station into darkness for over 90 minutes.

I wonder if anyone took a photo of the dark main station...

Update:
Indeed, there are a few photos floating around. A pretty bad smart phone video can be found at bambuser.

Update:
YouTube to the rescue:



It's interesting how, after a few days, more and more content pops up about something as boring as a limited power outage at a train station. First the same article was linked from multiple places, then a few local papers and TV stations published their own versions, and finally user-generated content climbed high enough in search rankings to be actually findable.

Salad

Hass Avocado, Black Bean, Tomato, Red Onion, Cheddar Cheese,
Bread 'n' Butter Pickled Jalapeno, Red Pepper, and
Cilantro Salad with Cumin-Lime Vinaigrette, Sour Cream, and Tortilla Crunch.

Peek-a-boo

Roaring Camp's CF7 is waiting in Felton for its next assignment down to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.

Some switching in the evening ...

Switching Emsingen and Talheim is a nice laid-back experience at the end of a day. Especially if -- for a change -- everything works. A lot of work items are idling on the to-do list, but I didn't feel like building stuff tonight.

I'm making up way-bills for any empty car cards that I encounter, defining at least the destination cities. If no specific industry is specified on the way-bill it's up to the operator to find a proper spot for the car at the respective stations. So far, car cards and way-bills feel more natural to me when operating the layout, compared to computer-generated switch-lists.

Best Buy: We're sorry

I went to www.bestbuy.com and got this. Why is that guy so friggin' happy that their Web site doesn't work?

Feeling better

Last week was quite eventful at work, so I took it slow over the weekend, and spent time with family and building stuff.

Today's project: The tunnel tube.

Now that the tunnel portal is installed, I need an actual tunnel. Near the tunnel entrance I also want stone structure. I made a cardboard template of the portal opening, transfered it onto thin plywood, and cut it out. Rinse, and repeat. The stone structure is made from Faller wall paper. I didn't like the color of the stones, so I used black water colors to make the inside of the tunnel quite dark. I sealed the watercolors with some Dullcote. I'll use heavy black paper further back in the tunnel. After a few inches one can't tell anymore whether the walls have stone structure anyways.

Next, I painted the ground on the inside of the tunnel deep black. 

Yep, that's exactly the effect I was after. I might add some additional black paper later to extend the covered portion of the tunnel. However, this will also need to be removable for access in case of derailments and repairs.

Now that the tunnel is in place, I mounted the other side-wing from the Busch kit upside down. Except for the small portal opening I really like this kit.

After this photo was taken I started building the substructure for scenery down to the creek, and extending the creek to the inside fascia.

First tunnel portal

I've had mock-tunnel portals made from cardboard on the layout for quite some time. Today, the first actual portal was installed.

This is a heavily modified Busch 7022 "Dampflok Tunnelportal" I bought by accident a couple years ago. The original is made for steam engines -- no catenary -- so the portal height it is quite low, just over 7 cm. I cut out the original arch stones in the portal opening enlarging it to an inside height of 9 cm. Then I installed a Faller arch stone strip in the new opening. The left side of the portal wall is heavily trimmed for clearance with adjacent scenery. The retaining wall on the left, as well as the tunnel crown, is from the Busch kit, too. Judicious application of Scuptamold will integrate this with the surrounding scenery.

Semaphores - installed

The north semaphores in Talheim are installed. Including covers. I used Polly Scale Aged Concrete for the base color of the cover, and will glue sand, ballast, and greenery on top. The idea is that the covers remain removable.

This afternoon the semaphores at Abzw. Talheim got their covers cut, as well as their wiring for the light bulbs. These semaphores were made for an analog Maerklin layout and the bulbs are wired to "light" and "ground", while the twincoils are powered from "light" to "ground".  With DCC decoders I don't have a constant on power source on the outputs, so I disconnected the "light" wire of the bulb from the twin coil machine, and instead wired in a dedicated 16V AC power source connected to "ground" of the semaphore body. Conveniently, the twin coil machine is insulated from the semaphore base, so I can easily keep those circuits apart.

The extra wires for the light bulbs can be seen to the right of the semaphore.

As much as I don't like paying taxes ...

"We as citizens don’t take enough personal responsibility for doing our part to pay for the basic services our government provides, and that we use every day."

From The Infrastructurist, click to read their commentary on gas taxes.

Couldn't have said this better.

Reflection

It's strange how I find myself doing wiring work again, while craving for more scenery. It seems I automatically end up wrapping up projects I started a long time ago (detection, semaphores, route control) before opening up even more cans of worms.
Might also be that I unconsciously want to ensure the railroad runs well and is usable before diverting attention to more scenery. The long tunnel sections continue to bug me, but that's how this layout worked out, and I'm not going to change that in this setup.

---

Either way, the visible Talheim semaphore signals are mostly installed and wired. I decided to use both multi-position semaphores I have as entry signals for Emsingen, since using one in Talheim would severely restrict the available switching space before the tunnel portal north of Talheim.
I also started to wire up detection sections in Talheim. Some more surgery with the Dremel tool will be necessary to add gaps to all sections. for proper detection. Since most of the station area is made up of already installed flex track, and gapping bent flex track is yielding very unwelcome kinks, I will need to cut a rail at two switches. Not ideal, but should work out ok.

San Diego Model Railroad Museum

Most of the footage is from the Tehachapi layout.

Kindergarten

The debt-limit "discussion" in Washington makes me sad.

This non-stop posturing for political gain on both sides (but particularly the Republicans) is so lame ... even Kindergarteners have a better sense for when to stop being silly.

Semaphores

I couldn't resist. ... Talheim now has all semaphores selected, though not yet functional. Tonight I installed the two on the north side of the station.

Talheim north end

The twin-coil machines are installed into the roadbed to hide them a bit from view. Where space is tight between tracks, I dug the hole even a little bit under the track. I will fit a piece of styrene over the opening to protect the machine from landscaping, dust and dirt. Yet I'll try to keep the cover removable for maintenance.

Twin-coil detail

Exit signals at the north end of Talheim

These signals are about 30 years old, and even though they are definitely not up to modern detailing standards, they look reasonably good.

Yes, that Roco 211 still needs detailing...

Talheim Local Panel - part 5

The remaining buttons are now connected, and I can finally reset a badly chose route before throwing it with the left black button in the back. The black button right next to it will be used to toggle whether to set signals, too, when setting a route.

One minor snag is that the cross-overs at the bottom don't throw consistently in unison as I press the button to toggle them. I'm not sure yet if the computer is sending the turnout commands too fast, or if the commands get lost. However, since I'm experiencing zero problems with other turnouts, and it's always the same turnout that doesn't toggle, I think communication is fine, and JMRI is sending the turnout commands a little bit too fast for the Tam Valley servo controller to handle. JMRI routes allow to add an extra delay between commands when executing the route, so I'll try that later tonight.

I'm very tempted to pull out the semaphores and connect them, even if only temporarily ... It would substantially change the look and feel of the Talheim area, and would be really cool. Hmmmmm...

Update 23:00:
My stupid perfectionism found a few issues:

• The old signals need a color refresh. Particularly the red color on some of the semaphore arms is in sad condition.
• To my utter surprise I'm short 2-3 signals. Had I realized this earlier, I could have picked up a few real cheap last weekend at Eurowest... However to my delight I noticed that there are two signals that can show Hp0/Hp1/Hp2. Those will be used as entry signals to Emsingen, and/or maybe Talheim. Though for Talheim I can pretend the entry signals are inside the tunnel.
• The semaphore masts feel small, but it turns out that a mast height of 10.5cm above the bottom of the rail works out to just over 9 meters in HO which is right in the middle of the prototypical heights of 8 or 10 m. I'm mounting the semaphors lower than intended to partially hide the huge Maerklin twin-coil machines in the base.
• In some locations the semaphore arms are partially above the neighboring track. My literature says that is prototypical as well. Tough one location in Talheim is very tight, and the prototype would have used a different kind of mast with tracks that close together.
• At least one track in Emsingen needs the semaphor location adjusted by a few centimeters.

Just toggling the cross-over turnouts in Talheim doesn't give reliable results, apparently because the QuadP can't handle the turnout commands right after each other. Adding a delay helps, but it looks like there's a race condition around releasing the sensor button, so the logix still didn't work correctly.

I broke up the one logix into three: One logix to toggle an internal sensor based on the pushbutton sensor going active, and one logix each to explicitly set the turnouts to thrown or closed based on the state of the internal sensor, including a small delay between the turnout commands. That works very reliably, and I couldn't get the turnouts to go out of sync any more.

Talheim Local Panel - part 4

Yup, still spending time on this. Tonight I finished up the basic JMRI logic, and even came up with a way to conditionally throw signals as the routes are set based on the state of a sensor. As usual apparently I'm over-engineering this ... again. Oh well, we'll see how long this one will last.

Seen at Eurowest 2011

To bad this was the only signal I could find on the whole layout, and it was always green :-)

Talheim Local Panel - part 3

It's starting to come together. The bad push-buttons are swapped out. The buttons for locally controlled turnouts are added, as well as the LEDs put in place for show (though not connected yet).

Push-buttons

I cleaned up the remaining mess from the 63400 testing. All systems are back to go, ... well, with the exception of the Talheim panel. The push buttons are in, plus some LEDs, electronics hooked up, too.

I'm now writing the routing logic in JMRI to get two-button routes. I.e. the way it works is that the operator presses one route button on the panel to start the route. Then another route button for the end of the route, and JMRI will align the switches (and later semaphore signals) accordingly. Since Talheim has tracks going into 5 directions there's no way to use the more regular way to control turnout ladders with a single button per route.

Some of the cheap push-button switches I use are already breaking, partly because I need to be really careful when soldering wires to the connectors, since the casing is plastic and easily melts, displacing the contacts inside. So annoying.

Does anyone have a source for reliable push-button switches that don't cost the world? The ones I use right now are similar to these.

Google Apps transition test

I completed transition of my Google Apps hosted domain to Google's new authentication system. This is a test post to make sure, Blogger still works with the new credentials.

Yumm Yumm - What giraffes like to eat

LPAC @ Belwood

Today was the last regular swim meet before Champs. Both Tatjana and Pascal are swimming great.








And I finally managed to convince kdenlive to not letterbox the funky SD mpeg2 wide-screen videos that my Panasonic SDR-H80 camera produces. I'm setting the project settings to edit in 720p, import the 480p SD material, force pixel-aspect ratio to 1.19 on the clips, edit the video, then finally render into HDV 720 30p 2-pass. This produces ginormous videos (sorry, storage and processing folks), but the final quality doesn't suffer nearly as much as when I edit and render in straight SD.

Stuck

What do you do when you're stuck at an airport overnight? ... Have some fun!

LocoNet issues with Uhlenbrock 63400

Wow. This is really confusing. 

The Uhlenbrock 63400 is connected to its own 16V AC transformer. The Intellibox is on its own transformer as well. The 63400 is connected to the Intellibox via short LocoNet cable. The track connection from the Intellibox is directly connected to a portion of the layout that doesn't have trains on it (one of the three power districts on the layout). And LocoNet communication is still affected.

If I unplug the transformer connected to the 63400, LocoNet communication is still affected.

If I remove the 16V AC feeder to the 63400 (i.e. make it a passive device), no issues.

Similarly, there are no issues if I remove the tracks from the Intellibox track connection. 

I.e. the mere fact that about 40ft of Maerklin track and the respective bus wiring is connected to the Intellibox moves the needle from "LocoNet works" to "LocoNet doesn't work".  I double-checked the cabling to ensure no crossed wires. There is no connectivity between the power districts, either.

While Uhlenbrock Support responded to my first two emails within a couple days each, the last update apparently got lost in the ether.

So, at the moment I'm putting this issue to rest and may get back to it when I build the panel for staging. Meanwhile, a TeamDigital SRC16 in combination with jmri logix is pressed into service to drive the panel. Not exactly the most economic or simplistic option, but it should do the job nicely, plus allows for some bells and whistles that make the Talheim block a bit more fun, too.

Unfortunately, the 63400 is too light as a paper weight.

Update 07/08/2011:
Uhlenbrock got back to me and suggested another test regime only involving the Uhlenbrock components and a short piece of track with a loco to weed out any influence from other components or wiring. I'll do that over the weekend.

Update 07/10/2011:
And that test had all the components working correctly.

I removed (even) more components from power and busses. By now all twin-coil turnouts are disconnected, the somewhat messy Talheim panel is completely removed and cabling cleaned up. No DS64's have push-buttons connected any more, DS64 power is disconnected (not that it matters for the test).

There are no obvious ways any more I can think of that would inject non-DCC power into the system, yet LocoNet communication is still affected.

I don't get it. There must be something wrong with how the track is wired, but I have no idea what it could be.  Need to find an oscilloscope, and re-read Wiring for DCC for any hints.

Tschuess!

Layout ground connected to LocoNet ... somewhere.

Hmmm, I heard back from Uhlenbrock's tech support. As suspected I must have a connection between layout ground and LocoNet somewhere, which causes communication issues on LocoNet. The problem is present when track is connected to the Intellibox. This won't be a fun exercise to find...

At least I have a quick and easy way to tell whether LocoNet is working or not: Connect the 63400 via LocoNet to the Intellibox by itself, then power up the Intellibox. If the keyboard mode takes less than a second to show in the display, all is good. If it takes longer than ~3 seconds, LocoNet communication is affected.

Some extra time...

Spending some time at home over the next few days should help me get through a few work items. More electronics. Freight car routing. Convert another locomotive to digital. Maybe I finish up more of the backdrop painting. That would be nice.

First bit of feedback on car card & waybill routing of freight cars: Contrary to when I used JMRIs operations module, I'm more inclined to keep cars and cards in sync. I often run only one or two trains in the evening for fun, not as a formal operating session. Having the car cards right there in my face makes it painfully obvious and quick to move them to the right slots and trains.

Yes, a stack of car cards is not nearly as neat as a printed train manifest, or switch list, but so far it seems they fit my needs better. Time will tell.

Update 06/18/2011:
Well, I did end up spending an hour or two in the garage throwing paint at the backdrop while chatting with my Dad. Quite enjoyable if not for the colors on the backdrop that didn't quite work out the way I wanted. On the second try it started to come out more the way I imagined. We'll see what it looks like when the paint had a chance to dry over night.

Exciting!

 

A bit more than 2 hours left...

DS64 "forgets" programming

When I mentioned a while ago that bad JMRI logic blew out a DS64 output, the actual problem was a lot more benign. The decoder simply "forgot" that output 3 is for turnout 11. I reprogrammed the 4 turnout IDs into that DS64, and afterwards everything worked just fine.

Various posts in the jmri-users and digitrax Yahoo groups report similar issues, and the same resolution. Problems with the track connection, or spikes on LocoNet frequently get mentioned as culprits for this. Hmmm...

Talheim Local Panel

The buttons are in, plus some LEDs. I'll test-program the Uhlenbrock 63400 unit driving this tomorrow.

The local panel for Talheim

Contrary to the Emsingen panel this one will be mounted horizontally next to the Intellibox, so I'm putting a little box around the electronics and wiring.

Elapsed time so far: 3 hours.

The red buttons are for setting routes ("Fahrstrassen"). The routes don't lock, since I don't yet have a way to unlock them automatically as trains pass through, though that would be cool. (I will need similar functionality once I have signals, so that a green signal turns red as the train passes through).

A route is set by pressing the two red buttons at the ends of the route, and all turnouts inbetween will be lined properly. I'll program the LEDs to light up if the turnout is set to Thrown (i.e. the train will take the diverging route, instead of going straight). I'm counting a total of 12 different routes.

Just like in Emsingen, the black buttons are "locally operated" turnouts, and simply toggle between Closed and Thrown. The 2 cross-overs at the small run-around are connected. The button throws the turnout, and the respective LED lights up if it is set to lead into the industry tracks.

Update 06/07/2011:
Oh well, that didn't work. LocoNet becomes unstable (again) as soon as I plug in the 63400. There must be something special about my LocoNet setup, though I can't put my finger on it. I'll do some more testing tomorrow, and if I can't figure it out quickly, replace the 63400 with a SRC16, and do the routes in JMRI. At least temporarily.

Update 06/08/2011:
Hmmm, that 63400 might be a bit wonky. I made sure it has a dedicated power supply, but even with only the Intellibox, a single DS64, and the LocoBuffer connected, LocoNet is unstable as soon as the 63400 is connected. I put the new panel into a box for now while I mull this over and tend to other things.

Glass

A few weeks ago I went to a glass blowing lesson at the Bay Area Glass Institute. This was very cool. While the participants didn't work directly with the melting oven, we got to do most of the forming, and cutting of the pieces. After some initial explanations the instructors pick the glass from the oven, and prep the hot blob of molten glass, and then you get to have it with scissors, pliers, and and funky round wooden tool, while the instructors help you along. One has to work fast as the glass quickly cools down and hardens. Once the piece is done it goes in a special cabinet to slowly cool down over night.

Every participant made a flower and a letter weight.

I think, my creations came out surprisingly well.

New Talheim panel in the works

Alright, I enjoy the panel in Emsingen so much that I'm building a similar one for Talheim (and will build yet another one for staging). Because the trackwork around Talheim is fairly complex (which should be an indicator that this will be an eternal bottleneck, but let's not go there...), Talheim routes are set by pressing two buttons on the panel at once, and the switches are lined appropriately. Well, at least they are supposed to.

The baseboard of the panel is done. Again I made this from hard-board. The buttons and LED holders are installed, and partially connected to the Uhlenbrock 63400 Switch-Control unit. I should be able to test-connect it to the layout tomorrow, and program the Switch-Control for the various routes.

This panel will replace the existing Talheim panel which was a lot of work to build, but turned out to be impractical to modify for the Kopper siding, as well as cumbersome to add LEDs or additional switches to it. I spent weeks building the old panel and the control board, mostly because of the many wires and solder connections needed to connect LEDs, buttons, and switch decoders to each other.

The new panel controls switches using LocoNet, so it doesn't matter which switch decoder controls the turnout, and they all work and behave the same.

Another shot at operations

I mentioned before that I feel too boxed in with doing car routing with the computer. I don't have that many freight cars on the layout that need routing (~35), and the operating pattern is fairly simple. I also don't want to chase after cars that are not where the computer says they are, nor do I care that much about preparing printouts of switch lists for operating the railroad.

So, I decided to try the traditional route with car cards and waybills. There is tons and tons of information on the Internet about how other people have done this (Google for [car cards way bills]), and including primers about the principles and mathematics of operations.

Here's my version 1.0 of Operations on the Welztalbahn. I'm using Micromark's car card & way bill set for this.

Cards

Each car is assigned a car card. The car card lists type of car, reporting marks, and has a pocket for the way bill card.

The way bill defines where the car is supposed to be delivered to next. Additional information may include load, shipper/consignee, and special instructions.

There are also engine cards that have information about a locomotive (road, reporting marks, and DCC address)

Trains

A train is formed by forming a stack of car cards representing each car in the train, and putting the respective locomotive card on top. I use colored paper clips to hold together the card stack.

Train types in priority order:

• White - switching and deliveries
• Green - Local Freight (typical stops in Emsingen and exchanges cars at the yard)
• Blue - Through Freight (typically unit trains, their main purpose is to keep traffic up and get in the way)
• Red - Local Passenger Train (typical on-layout stops are Emsingen and Talheim)
• Purple - Through Passenger Train (typcial on-layout stop is Emsingen)

The pocket on the locomotive card has a schedule that describes destination, stops, and for passenger trains, length of station stops.

Car Routing

Following the principles of car card and waybill operation, the destination for each freight car is provided by the way bill. To keep things simple, at the moment not every way bill is fully filled in. Instead, I simply color code for the major destinations:

• Blue - Deliver to the North
• Yellow - Deliver to the South
• Green - Deliver to Talheim
• Red - Deliver to Emsingen

Unless the way bill has specific instructions, the operator decides on an appropriate industry spot based on the type of car. Future iterations of the operating scheme will likely improve substantially on this aspect.

We'll see how this works...

Unexpected

Elvira having fun running a passenger local

Elvira stopped by the train room yesterday evening. We chatted a bit, and as usual with visitors, I handed her a throttle to run a passenger train. She seemed to enjoyed it, so I ran a couple more trains in addition to keep traffic up and make it more interesting. She still enjoyed it apparently.

Alrighty then, ... let's try switching: "Here's a short freight train in Emsingen, run it down to Talheim, drop the cars at this, this, and that location, pick up the other cars and come back to Emsingen."
That was a nice little brainteaser puzzle, and she managed it perfectly.

Well done! :-)

Couple things I noticed while doing this:

• The new local panel in Emsingen works well. I need to build a similar panel for Talheim. 
• The cheapo push buttons are not so great, though. 
• The Talheim panel needs LEDs for reporting which way switches are set.
• There are a few dead spots in the less used industry leads due to dirty track.
• Talheim Track 2 is commonly used for temporary car storage while switching. I need more experience how badly this affects traffic flow through Talheim and whether that is acceptable. Otherwise, I need to consider adding another track for working the Talheim industries, though there really isn't any space.

More progress

Panel installed in the fascia

After quite some deliberation where exactly to put the local panel for Emsingen, I cut a hole in the fascia, and put the panel behind. This gives a nice look, and I hope the panel will be in a useful position for operators of all ages. The alternatives just didn't work for everyone. I tried installed the panel at an angle below the fascia, but that would have required to either intrude into the operator space, or the panel wouldn't have been visible for taller operators. Another option I briefly considered was the mount it from the ceiling (maybe on a movable arm), but that wasn't really satisfying either. In the end the traditional "mount it in the fascia" option worked out best. The temporary mounts for the panel will remain in place until I have a chance to give it a good work-out.

Platform detail.

I cleaned half of the underground track so far. I cut myself a little "cleaning pad" from hardboard and glued a handle to it. That way it's easy to apply some cleaning solution to the hardboard and slide it up and down the track. I'm trying to avoid using a Brightboy to reduce the amount of new scratches on these old sectional tracks.

The platforms of Emsingen are taking shape. The platform edges are made from wood and will get a pattern of large stone blocks when I'm done with the sand cover. The area between the wood pieces are filled with very fine, soupy and colored plaster, and topped with very fine N scale ballast.

This method of building a platform has grown on me, and I'm likely going to use it again when it's time to build the platform in Talheim. The photo shows the almost finished state of the platform (of course for messy work like this, the track gets covered up with painters tape). Later I will add some vegetation, "platform furniture" (lights, benches, signs), as well as people to break up the monotony. 

Summer Rain

Summer ... Rain? Here? Seriously? That can't be right.

Yep.

We very much enjoyed the dripping of the rain while sitting outside. The smell of fresh rain on grass.

Smooth

The BR211 from Roco is a very nice runner. It runs fairly quietly, with only a slight wirring sound. Nowhere as loud as the Maerklin BR86, but not as quiet as the Maerklin BR24, which is practically silent.

BR211 completed its run-in routine over the last two evenings. Now it's time for detailing and some minor reprogramming (I want to be able to turn off the red rear lights from the throttle, since they are only supposed to be on when the engine is running light). I'll use that opportunity to save the decoder values into JMRI, and adjust the locomotive address.

Staging 2 tracks affect current draw sensor

Last night I was running a few locomotives and notices that there's lots of LocoNet traffic. LocoNet monitor reveals that the sensor measuring current draw in the staging departure block was continously flipping on and off.

After installing Staging 2 all three tracks were part of that block. I didn't really worry about train detection when I temporarily installed Staging 2. Bad idea...

Either way, apparently there's some resistance between the rails in Staging 2. I'll have to check for that when I install the track there permanently. Meanwhile, I  insulated Staging 2 from the departure block, and now the sensor is behaving properly again.

Emsingen Panel close to working

The LocoNet problems I had with the SRC16 are now resolved (Thank you, thank you, Bill Robinson!) Adding a DS64 on the LocoNet bus apparently provided enough signal stability that the SRC16 can work properly with the Intellibox.

I moved on to programming the local panel and it's respective routes before putting the decoder back into the layout. So ... much ... fun!

I'll post some pictures once everything is installed.

Update 05/24/2011:
The Emsingen panel and SRC16 are working correctly in place now. Routes work as advertised. For some routes the SRC16 needs to throw switches that are connected only to the track bus. The Intellibox translates the Switch commands sent to LocoNet from the SRC16 into DCC commands sent via the DCC accessory bus and executed by a Tam Valley Depot servo decoder.

Next up:
Temporarily put Staging 2 in place, track cleaning, some loco maintenance, and a shake out Ops session to determine work items for the next 2-3 weeks.

Reshuffling, part 1

I'm probably trying to do too much, but whatever...

Too much stuff.

Some of the supplies and tools cabinets are in the way of Staging 2. And I wanted to rearrange that area for a while now, make it more narrow to actually allow for a second chair, so the cabinets have to move. And the computer (oh, finding a new place for that is a lot harder than I thought).

And I wanted to finally hook up the blue "night light", and build a box into the wall so that freight cars can actually enter the factory hall at Werner & Soehne.

New switch to get into Staging 2

And I wanted to gain more storage for various kits and building material that's currently stored under the layout. So I started putting some of the computer supplies from the big garage cabinet into a box, only to realize that *that* cabinet is apparently too humid. Various USB connectors had rust on them, and spray cans where rusty at the bottom. Hmmmm. I should have grabbed that shelf/cabinet combo my neighbors gave away for free last weekend, and chop it down so that it fits along the train room...

I got the shelf for Staging 2 installed, since that defines how much space I have for the shelves and boxes. I opened up the wall, after moving all the wood and styrofoam out of the way that's stored on the other side, and ran wiring for the blue light, and built the box in the wall for Werner & Soehne.

Shelving Rearranged

Oh, and yesterday I finished painting the upstairs hallway, the stairs and a couple somewhat inaccessible walls above the entrance area. Took me only 3 1/2 years after our move-in date to get to that.

That reminds me... A little over 3 years ago, I started construction of what is now the train room. Progress has been slow, but steady, even though at times there's been very little happening for months at a time.

In other news

Some long outstanding orders are finally starting to come in.

• A Roco BR211 diesel engine that will go very nicely with passenger trains for local service, along with the Maerklin BR24, and the (still to be digitized) Schienenbus.
• All remaining hardware to digitize the Schienenbus.
• Another DS64 and a couple more Tortoises.
• The engine shed for Emsingen will complete the set of buildings for the small servicing facility I'm planning, and allow me to proceed with the overall arrangement of tracks and buildings there.
• Bullfrog Snot liquid traction tires to get better traction for BR24. I haven't used this before, but I hope it will address the slipping issues experienced by this otherwise very nice model.
• The first city houses for the town of Emsingen. This will be a combination of existing kits from the old layout, a few new kits, some low-relief models, and potentially a partial photo background for more depth.

Uhlenbrock Intellibox + Team Digital SRC16 powered from track = Smoke

I love the SRC16. It's a very powerful and flexible stationary DCC decoder with 16 independent inputs and the ability to drive up to 16 slow motion switch machines like the Circuitron Tortoise (when using the MotoD board, otherwise it's 8 Tortoises). I use a single SRC16 for the control panel in Emsingen, and all slow-motion switch machines at that station.

I mentioned before that I had trouble getting my Team Digital SRC16 to say a peep on LocoNet. After quite a bit of back and forth with Team Digital's support, and breaking a second SRC16 at least now I know what the problem is.

LocoNet Ground of the Uhlenbrock Intellibox is not referenced to track ground (contrary to e.g. a Digitrax system). So when you power the SRC16 from track power, and plug in LocoNet, you most certainly fry a little resistor near the LocoNet plugs. Afterwards the SRC16 still works just fine, but lost it's ability to talk to LocoNet, no matter what CVs are set.

The suggested work-around is simple:
Don't use track power, use a 12V DC wallwart. I'll try to bench-test this soon. I'm looking forward to being able to continue with work in Emsingen.

Team Digital was nice enough to repair the two fried units.

Update 05/25/2011:
The bench-test worked out great .

Skype

Only days after announcing a security vulnerability in the Mac Client, Skype gets purchased by Microsoft for $8.5B. Apparently Windows is so secure now, that the Microsoft security folks needed a new challenge.

More staging

More staging? Don't I have enough staging tracks already? Well, yeah, kinda.

I have 4 staging tracks at the moment, 170-200cm in length. That is a lot longer than my longest passing tracks which is 120cm in Emsingen, so when I operate I often end up doubling up two of the shorter trains in the longer staging tracks. ... And then the schedule asks for the rear train to show up first. There are ways around that (e.g. shuffling trains to another staging track, or releasing the first train to the ramp, and then use the down ramp track to bring the second train up... yes, there are a lot of switches in staging...) but those operations are not fun to do, and the risk of derailments is high. I call the existing staging yard Staging 1.
Additionally, as I digitize more locomotives, I need more space for active trains.

To provide more storage capacity and expand staging capacity, I decided to stick a few more staging tracks below Moebelfabrik Kopper along one wall of the room. The shelf for Staging 2 is not yet built, so I tested the track arrangement by simply laying out the tracks on top of the future of home of Moebelfabrik Kopper.

Here are the constraints for Staging 2:

• stub-ended staging (due to space and location)
• 3-4 tracks (I'm not going to buy any additional M-Track for Staging 2)
• accessible
• enter/exit Staging 2 from the departure track of Staging 1 (use the cross-over on the ramp to get from the down ramp track to the departure track and the switch to Staging 2
• no manual handling of locomotives between arrival and departure at Staging 2

I was able to cut an additional switch for accessing Staging 2 in the existing trackage behind the last switch of Staging 1 without modifying the existing geometry of the departure track.  Originally I planned a trapezoid switch arrangement for Staging 2 giving me 120 cm usable length for each staging track. Due to how the departure track curves and underground supports, I gave up on that approach and ended up with above arrangement. I'm mostly using M-track switches from my Dad's layout. Each staging track will have a usable length of 130cm. The switch ladder made from double-slip switches allows locomotives to move around the train.

The rear track is 77cm between switches, the middle track 90cm, and the front track 117cm. This is sufficient for most passenger locals I'm plannung to run. The full 130cm are available for longer trains, but those need more involved maneuvers to swap the locomotive to the other end of the train. A stub track can be attached to the last switch in the lower right of the picture. That track will stick through the door and will need to be removable. It might be possible to build a removable return loop from that last switch out into the garage and conecting to the middle track through a hole in the wall. 

There is a short stub track off the switches on the layout side to arrange for locomotive changes without running around the cars of an arrived train.

Ridiculous

A recent article in the California HSR Blog talks about the security implications of potential terrorist attacks on high-speed rail infrastructure.

Of course, as one response TSA-style passenger screenings (also known as "security theater") are being floated by the folks that own that hammer.
Robert Cruickshank's discussion of the topic in the blog entry is worth reading, as he presents a very level-headed and fact-based response to such suggestions.

My take on this is, that rail systems by their nature are very large, and the tracks are easily accessible. For the determined, it's trivial and quite a bit more effective to attack trains without being inside, so to me the idea to increase train security by screening the passengers is simply ridiculous.

Maybe that's because, like Robert suggests, because I'm used to european trains as an effective, well integrated transportation mode. Contrary to Robert I don't think Europeans are "taking their chances" using public transit. Instead the mode of transportation is a choice that everyone makes when they leave the relative safety of their house. Every year a lot more people die from car accidents than terrorist attacks...

San Diego Model Railroad Museum - a mixed experience

We went to visit the San Diego Model Railroad Museum today. It was a very mixed experience. Beforehand I took a look at their Web site, and learned that they have over 2700 sqm of floor space making it one of the biggest model railroad museums in the world. Now that's cool.

Once we got there two things irritated me right away:

• Most of the layouts are behind glass, which makes photography incredibly difficult, if not impossible.
• There's a lot of layout space still under construction.

Now, the latter item wasn't really that bad, but it made two other items stand out even more:

• Very few trains were moving.
• Most of the layouts are not really set up to be viewed from the visitor aisle.

As I was wandering down the visitor aisle between the first two layout rooms, I was beating myself that I didn't visit during one of the twice-weekly "work sessions" (Tuesday and Friday evenings). Doing that would have accomplished two things:

• Getting to see (some of) the layouts without having to peek through glass
• Have a chat with the people actually building this thing

I realized that this museum is really a collection of a few large club layouts in one space.

The O-Scale "Cabrillo Southwestern" didn't really excite me that much. The layout lighting was terrible, and it was hard to see details in the back of the rectangular layout room, since the visitor aisle runs only along one of the long edges of the rectangle. Looking at construction methods and track layout it appears this layout has been around for quite a while (though the Website claims it was designed in 1986 ... Well that's still 25 years :-) The layout did remind me about how big O-Scale really is. Thus, the hefty rolling stock had some serious "oompf" to it.

A large part of the HO-Scale "San Diego & Arizona Eastern", especially near the museum entrance, is still visibly under construction. This layout attempts a quite correct depiction of actual rail lines around San Diego to the East and South into Mexico. This is one of the biggest layouts in the museum space-wise, and was quite interesting to view. The area depicting San Diego looks very interesting to operate on. The "desert side" with El Cajon has some impressive deep canyons and trestles , though the scenery is very sparse. This layout "burns" a lot of space on the mountains, canyons, and the descent into El Cajon. It does look more or less accurate and true to the prototype. Unfortunately for the museum visitor, the prototype is a lot of single-track main line. The layout is manually controlled, and doesn't appear to have any automation, so while we were visiting two friendly guys were running trains over the mountains. ... For some reason pretty much all major trains on the layout were at or en-route to El Cajon. So there was a major traffic jam getting trains out from El Cajon and back on the San Diego side of the layout. Somewhat interesting for the operators. Terrible for the visitor. This layout has a lot of potential, though...

The N-Scale "Pacific Desert Lines" was cute to look at. The visitor aisle side of the layout is painted like a passenger railcar and the viewing windows are the windows of the car. Neat. The layout is large and very deep (6+ meters). Given it's N-scale, it's hard to see anything interesting that's more than 2-3 meters away from the visitor aisle. I saw a single train moving on this layout. Disappointing.

The kids had a blast in the "Toy Train gallery" which is a relatively small room with 3 gentlemen running Lionel trains on 3-rail track. The layout is stuffed with tracks all over and there's a lot going on, so a very welcome diversion from the mostly static displays we saw with the other layouts.

Hands-down the most impressive layout at the museum is the "Tehachapi Pass" HO layout. The scenery in combination with the painted backdrop is superb, and the layout is actually arranged to be viewer friendly. There are no windows to peek through, no back at the wall features like on most of the other layouts. Just the SP/BNSF Tehachapi mainline climbing through the mountains up to the pass. Operationally, again this is not particularly interesting to watch, and not many trains where running, but the presentation and level of detail make up for it. I particularly liked the scene at Bealville, which has a very nice, old-timey atmosphere. Even though this layout is controlled digitally, trains are run over the line by an operator, one at a time, so there wasn't a lot going on here either.

Was it worth going? I don't know. Definitely more interesting than some other attractions at Balboa park, but my expectations were certainly higher than the delivery. I came for the layouts, so I didn't pay much attention to the wall display cases, with exception of the one that had items from John Allen's Gorre & Daphetid layout, including paper machee models of the layout.

Due to the impossible photography conditions, I didn't take many pictures. However, I got some video footage and will upload to Youtube if it's usable.

Progress?

Yep, there's been very little progress on the layout lately. Work kept me busy, and the weekends are chock-full with non-modelling activities.

I did manage to build a new panel for Emsingen that should be more straight-forward to use than the old one. Now, if only I could convince the SRC16 decoder to actually talk to LocoNet, so that the push-button actions actually show up as switch commands to the command station... Team Digital's support is very responsive, but we haven't gotten to the bottom of this yet.

Out of frustration dealing with electronics the last few evenings I worked on the layout, tonight I added a platform edge to Emsingen's track 2, as well as built the styrofoam core for tracks 1,  and 1a. Styrofoam is a messy material to use for this, but it's what I had on hand for track 2, so I used it for track 1 as well.

The access hatch under the Emsingen station building is starting to become tight. This was always meant for emergencies only, but turned out to be convenient when I have visitors so I can get out of the way, as well as for working on the engine servicing facility.
I'm pretty sure I'll build the town of Emsingen off-layout, once I have a basic support frame in place, since that corner is harder to reach than I expected.

This is tiresome and makes me annoying

Taxes for 2010 are done, and e-filed. Just like last year the return keeps getting more complicated. One stumbling block took me a while a figure out, but in the end was really easy ...
Once you make your way through the various broker statements and 1099 forms, and reconcile what they talk about with what TurboTax offers.

Overall, I was quite a bit more annoyed about filing taxes this year than last year.

Thirty Inches of Snow

The buzz in the Boston office for the last couple days was that there will be snow. It's certainly cold enough, but every morning I woke up, there was no snow.

Until today:

A whopping thirty linear inches of snow, right next to the side walk.

Update (03/24/2011):
Tonight there was a very light snow shower. It was nice walking back to the hotel with some white fluffy stuff twirling around, though it was over after a few minutes, and no snow on the ground. Everyone here is longing for spring and was amused by my excitement about a few flakes of snow.

Rain and sun at the airport

My flight is delayed. There's some heavy rain around SFO. Though, it looks nice through the airport windows.

Boston will be a lot colder than San Francisco...


Update:
Boston _is_ colder.


Update:
Za Restaurant has an execellent Mac'N'Cheese pizza, that I improved further with bacon per recommendation from the waitress. Very good. Very rich. Nice crust.

Second Operating Session on the Welztalbahn

Well, this was a disaster.

I wasn't prepared. Emsingen wasn't ready. JMRI Logix played tricks on me. And there were power problems.

When I installed the yard in Emsingen, I apparently forgot to connect one of the tracks to power. That was easily fixed, once noticed (thanks, Balasz), but it was a bit annoying nethertheless. What was worse, though, was that my spiffy new JMRI panel for Emsingen is over-engineered, has bugs in the routing logix, and only works on the control computer. The over-engineering makes the panel harder to use than necessary. The logix bug causes an endless series of switch commands to be sent to one switch, renders JMRI unresponsive, and apparently managed to burn out the affected output on one of my DS64 stationary decoders.
Finally, the whole reason I created that panel was so that I can drive it via the Web interface from an Android G1 smart phone.  The catch? Sensor button pushes, which were meant as the primary means to drive the panel are not recognized via the Web interface.

We spent quite a bit of time debugging car routing in the Operations part of JMRI. Waaaay too much time for routing 30 cars around. "How did that car get here, and why is it not moving?", was a fairly common sigh.

There were also issues with power pickup in some underground sections, especially in the curves leading to and from the ramp. Staging needs some thorough clean-up and track polishing. At least once the PSX circuit breakers were too sensitive and cut power for what should have been a momentary blip.

I have a lot of work to do...

Success!

It took me only 3 evenings in elapsed time, but the dryer belt is replaced thanks to Appliance Parts on Blossom Hill, judicious study of Internet how-to articles (which appear to be more or less just copies of each other), and good old observation.

Our dryer flat out stopped spinning the drum. After a few Google searches it was likely that the dryer belt was bad, and that was confirmed when I found the old belt under the dryer. I didn't realize at first, but dryers are really just boxes of sheet metal held together with little plastic clips and a few screws. When you know where to pull a dryer quickly comes apart. The mechanics are super simple, too: A motor, a pulley, a belt around the drum. Once you figure out in what sequence to install the parts, and where to thread the belt (belt around drum, put pulley in place, loop belt through pulley, then around motor axle), with help holding the drum in place, this was really just a 15 minute job start to finish.

I guess most of the $100 I saved by doing this myself pay for the knowledge of doing this efficiently.

Laughing Baby

What the hell is so funny about this video? I don't really know. I don't know the poster, nor the baby.
At the surface it's like any of the other million laughing baby videos on Youtube.

Yet, I still can't stop laughing any time I watch this video. The faces this baby makes, ... His reaction to the blowing-nose noises, ... It just cracks me up.

That didn't work

I had this idea to use a spare Android G1 as a portable panel for Emsingen (at least until I'd built a physical panel near the station). I made a panel for Emsingen in JMRI and decked it all out with logix and routes. On the screen I could emulate the prototype practice of pressing a source and a target button and switches would be lined for the route between the two buttons.

Well, it didn't work out that way, mainly because the panel as presented by JMRI's mini-Webserver doesn't harmonize with Android's Web browser, so any clicks on Android result in a refresh of the panel image, but no actual button press being recorded on my JMRI IS buttons.

Next I experimented with the sand cover of the platform in Emsingen. Neither deco-sand, nor regular sand I had available worked out. The deco sand is way too shiny, and glittery. The platform looked like a Danish butter cookie. Regular sand is not sufficiently homogeneous and fine. I think I need some very fine powdery sand for this to come out right. Maybe Arizona Rock and Minerals Co. has a color and grain size that works in their product catalog ...

Finally a useful explanation of what's happening at Fukushima

This blog entry explains very clearly and precisely how reactors like Fukushima-1 function and what can and can not happen during events that lead to possible meltdowns. I very much like the comparison in the comments of nuclear meltdowns to heart-attacks. They are all bad, but not every heart attack will kill you.

"Gar kein Problem"

My flight back to the US is this coming Monday. I have a Lufthansa ticket, and will arrive by train at Frankfurt airport at 12:38 (Lufthansa 353). My connecting flight is Lufthansa 9052 (i.e. United 901), leaving at 14:00. The departure time is really convenient since I don't need to hurry Monday morning, or get up at some awful early-morning hour.

I just called Lufthansa reservations to confirm whether 72 minutes is enough time to get off the train, check luggage, pass through security, and get to the departure gate.  "Ja das geht, ist gar kein Problem", said the nice lady at the other end.

ok, then, if this is no problem, I won't worry about it.