"Paneling" ...

Panel for stub-ended staging and ramp cross-over 

... or what do you call the process of building panels?

Today I finally built the panels for controlling the turnout ladders in hidden staging, as well as the hidden cross-over on the ramp.

I didn't bother with turnout position feedback on these panels since I eventually will have a monitor on the wall that shows turnout positions, occupancy, and maybe even a live video feed of the traffic on the ramp. Also, all these turnouts are driven by solenoid motors, so there's a satisfying SMACK whenever they throw, so you know you hit the button right. I'm using push-buttons for the route selection, just like on the rest of the layout. However, the cross-over is controlled by a toggle switch. There are only two scenarios when this cross-over is used, and both require the train to be under manual control:

• A train leaving staging, but using the inbound track of the ramp (e.g. to bypass a train that's already waiting on the outbound track.
• A train entering the stub-ended staging tracks 5 through 8.

Panel for entering through staging from the ramp

Eventually (in the far, far future), there could be automation in staging that takes a train from the inbound (downward) track on the ramp to one of tracks 1 through 4 for storage, as well as release a train from these tracks and positions it on the outbound track of the ramp.

For now, there's manual control of trains in staging (supported by occupancy detection), as well as manual selection which track the train ends up on.

The panels are made from hardboard and are -- obviously -- very basic. However, they are relatively quick to build,  ... and throw out if needs change.

And here's an overview shot of what the Talheim operator position looks like. I intentionally split the panels for staging in two, so that they can be reached easily by the operator/dispatcher working behind the Talheim operator, as well as are within easy reach for one man operation.

Pascal's backyard bench

Pascal designed and built this bench from plywood and thin tree branches. I helped him just a little bit with drilling the holes in the plywood. He is already building his next piece of backyard furniture. Stay tuned.

Great America

As simple as it is, Psycho Mouse is one of my favorite rides...

Time to go home

This was a really busy week with long hours. The plane for my flight just arrived and it looks like we'll be leaving on time. I'm very much looking forward to being back home and a relaxing July 4th week.

The Kendall in the rain

View from the office. Those white specs are raindrops.

Hmmm. For some reason over the years I developed this strange fascination with rain. Must be the California sun drying out my brain. Being outside during one of yesterday's thunderstorms was quite exciting, too.

Nice job, 788

Whenever I fly with United, I enjoy listening to the communication with the air traffic controllers on channel 9.

While waiting for today's flight from San Francisco to Boston, I noticed already that the airport was very busy. Lots of planes moving about on their way to and from their parking positions.
Eventually it was our turn for departure, pushed back, and after some taxing lined up on runway 1R ready for departure.

Arrival traffic was super-busy. The controller was talking non-stop, arriving planes were talking over each other…

"One after the other, please" - SFO Tower

Every 45 seconds or so a plane was announcing visual of the bridge and the runway, indicating they are in final approach. Both arrival runways in operation.
I was thinking we're going to sit here for a while, when the tower advised our pilot that there'll be an opening soon.

"United 788. I'll let you out in a little bit. No delay!" - SFO Tower

and a short time later:

"United 788. Cleared for takeoff." - SFO Tower

Immediately, the engines reved up and we started moving. … I looked out the window to the right as we crossed runways 28 and could easily make out 7 planes lined up for landing. One of them really low and obviously close to the runway.

Soon after we went airborne.

"United 788. Nice job!" - SFO Tower

I'm on my way to Boston. Again.

Koef III switching in Talheim

Koef 11251 switches cars in Talheim

Nice, but boring

Robots?

Fifth Operations Session on the Welztalbahn

This session ended up being split over multiple days, because of time constraints and novice operators.

My Dad and Wolfram ran trains based on a light schedule, while I dispatched, and prepped staging on the fly. This wasn't a particularly fluid session, though I think everyone got the hang of it eventually. Wolfram commented later, that he always considered a freight train as one whole, and the act of breaking it up and sorting the cars was a new concept he really enjoyed.

Dad switching in Talheim

As always I learned a few things...

• Make the control panels less confusing.
  Mixing route control and local controlled switches on the same panel is sub-optimal. In addition many first time operators have trouble correlating the panel schematic with the tracks. Still trying to decide if this is a fundamental problem when folks are unfamiliar with a layout, or if there's anything I can do to make this easier.
  I've seen this on other layouts that use panels, too. It takes a little bit time to map lines in a diagram to tracks, but I can likely improve on the presentation of the panels. E.g. I'm not sure how far I want to go with providing feedback on the hard panels. Switch positions: Definitely... Signals: Maybe... Occupancy: I don't think so.
  A bit more signage and track names/numbers on the panels should be helpful, too.
• Build panels for hidden staging and make occupancy feedback more fluid
  Controlling the train room computer by Remote Desktop from a laptop is sub-optimal.
• Better seating
  At least the Emsingen panel is hard to see in it's current location while the operator is standing. An unfortunate side-effect of the Emsingen "control pit".
• When preparing a session I need to better take into account experience level of operators
  The last few sessions I had a very experienced operator running Emsingen Yard. I ignored how steep the learning curve for this actually is. Both in terms of concepts, as well as being efficient in switching moves.
• When preparing a session I need to better take into account what operators are interested in.
  Not everyone enjoys switching operations as much as I do, and the layout has sufficient opportunities to keep train activity up (e.g. on operator might be running 2-3 passenger trains concurrently), while another operator might be doing light switching in between those "scheduled" trains.
• There were a few mechanical problems
  Two dead spots on the down ramp to staging, as well as the pick-up shoe of one engine (BR24) getting stuck at the top of the ramp just before the curved cross-over. I experienced the latter problem around the same time last year with BR50, but then it disappeared and I was unable to track it down completely. I suspect this is related to wood expanding/contracting as the summer season heats up. This time I have a pretty good idea about the culprit and might build something from styrene to guide the pickup shoe over the trouble spot.

Over the course of 2 evenings we ran the 5 scheduled freights, as well as a few passenger trains. 

Maker Faire Redux

Remember when I wrote how Pascal was fascinated by the pinball machines of the Pacific Pinball Museum? He was totally immersed in the games, the lights, the ball, the flippers...

Today, I came home and Pascal had built his own personal arcade from shoe boxes and cardboard.

Fixing the rotating flipper on the "big" pinball machine. Pascal re-used a motor from his roller coaster for that.

The "first" pinball machine. Ingenious use of pencils as axles. They work very well, by the way.

A proud Maker!

The ball gets flipped up the ball channel with your fingers. The flippers are rotated by hand. The boxes sit on wooden blocks. Love it.

Muni Lightrail cars on Interstate 280

Fixing a payment card

What do you do when you are uncomfortable with new payment options banks push on you? You ... fix ... the card.

Phil Parker is showing how to do this with a Barclay's PayTag card in his workbench blog:

http://philsworkbench.blogspot.com/2012/05/barclays-paytag-vs-modelling-tools.html

How the Welztalbahn developed over the last four years

I'm building the Welztalbahn layout for about 4 years now.

Spring 2008: It all started with a platform in the garage

Spring 2009: Hidden staging level and ramp to middle level are built. Also, I'm already toying with computer control.

Spring 2010: Track on the middle level is almost complete. First scenery ("the creek") is in.

Spring 2011: The main line is functional through all 3 levels. Most tracks are in. There's scenery, even some background.

Spring 2012: More scenery, signals, and a tested operating scheme.

Steinlehof

What difference a little bit Green and removing protective tape makes. The road is unfinished painted Scuptamold, but works surprisingly well for this photo. I have a design for Steinlebruecke in mind which will be a wooden span over the track in the background. There's a good chance that I'll build that bridge in place because of the odd angles to support the height difference to the forest road.

There's a bunch of details missing, but I'll get to that some other time. Next up on the list is cleaning up the layout and making it operational again.

Grass

Work in progress at Steinlehof.

Me and the Grassinator made food for the cows. For now the cows enjoy their free roaming space. Eventually there will be fences, so the cows don't graze on the train tracks.

Partial Solar Eclipse in San Jose, CA

For today's partial solar eclipse I made a pinhole camera, so we can see the effect without risk of causing permanent damage to our eyes.

The partially obscured sun created really awesome, freaky half-round shadows of leaves.

With the right settings on the camera and the help of a welder's mask, one can even get a reasonably sharp picture of the obscured sun.

Makerfaire

Whiskeydrome

This was our second visit to Makerfaire. Just like last year the event is overwhelming, exciting, and fun, all at the same time, and everyone takes home different impressions and new ideas.

One can spend most of the day walking the booths in the big Expo Hall alone. Notable booths and things we liked the most:

Building a foam rocket. Pascal enjoyed building and launching a rocket made of foam pipe, duct tape and foam sheets.

In the South Lot were plenty of odd contraptions (partially) made of bicycle parts, that where plenty of fun to ride.

The WhiskeyDrome guys were back. Roland, Pascal, and myself watched for quite a while. They even ride hands-free! Awesome.

The Crucible Village. They showed a truck that had 8 remote-controlled fire blowers installed on the bed. Gas. Fire. Heat. What else can you ask for?

Levitating Fountain

The Expo Hall. Many small and medium vendors and organizations. Electronics, Arduino in particular, was almost everywhere. I looked specifically for booths that did not show how to do something with Arduino boards (or did it in a way that wasn't immediately obvious). Gluemotor looked like an interesting project. I loved the "Levitating Fountain", which uses PWM and stroboscopes to manipulate a stream of water so that you see droplets falling down, and up!

Pascal was fascinated by the mechanical pinball machines of the Pacific Pinball Museum.

After a quick lunch (and waiting a long time in line to get to the order window), we explored the "dark hall", which featured a demonstration of Intel's Computer Controlled Orchestra . I saw part of the performance when we got into the hall. When they got ready for the next one, I got the kids, and brought Pascal to the front of the crowd surrounding the installation. He watched the whole thing almost motionless. Afterwards, he said: "That was so cool. Unbelievably cool."

Operating and modifying MATE's Underwater Robots kept Pascal busy for a long time, just like delving into playing with Bloxes a few feet away.

Gon KiRin is a kinetic dragon sculpture that spews fire, and you can climb on it, in it, even lounge on couches. When we walked along one side, one of the guys winked Pascal and Tatjana over and told them to press The Button. ... Pascal pressed it first and out spew a 10 ft flame from the dragons mouth! Pascal's face lit up, and he pressed The Button again. And again. So much fun.

As was building your very own toolbox from sheet metal at the booth right next to the Coke and Mentos stage.

We spent most of the day at the Faire, and everyone had a great time.

"Des koennen sie alles senden was ich gesagt hab"

Ich mag den Seehofer ja nicht so unbedingt, aber das hier ist klasse:

Hiding the semaphor machine

I'm using old-style Maerklin semaphores for my signals. The masts are attached to a dual-coil switch machine which is quite bulky. In station areas I managed to hide them between the tracks and lowered them into the roadbed.

However, Emsingen's entry signal A is out in the middle of the forest, and I do need the machinery to be accessible for servicing. In this case ended up fitting a sheet of styrene over the space, brace it with some wood, and cover the ends with stone sheet.

Placing the cover at the signal showed that I didn't get the cutout for the mast quite right and had to enlarge the hole. I'll put a telephone cabin in front of the hole, so that it's not quite as obvious. Yes, this is actually one of the triple-coil semaphors, so the cover needed to be quite big.

Test fitting.

Update 2012/05/13:

Cover painted and topped with a thin layer of fine sand.

I painted the base and topped it with a thin layer of fine sand. Looks much better than the stark white of styrene.
The telephone box looks way out of scale. I wonder if this was a N-scale kit...

Making the road narrower

Narrower access road.

Well, this didn't quite come out the way I wanted.

Looking at the access road today, it feels like I'm building a German Autobahn through the Black Forest, or at least a major two lane highway. I contemplating ripping out the access road and starting over, but before I did that I traced a narrower one lane road on the existing shoulder and used a hobby knife to cut through the Scuptamold-tape-cardboard contraption along the edge of that narrow road. Next I simply cut off a few millimeters of material, straightened out the edge, and voila ... this looked much more like what I had in mind.

The first photo shows the new road after I made the cut and re-arranged the slope. The former edge of the road is half-way down the embankment now. The second photo shows the situation after patching up the cut with Scuptamold.

Embankment patched up.

Steinlebruecke

While in Zurich my Dad gave me a great idea what to do about the access road to Steinlehof after it crossed Steinlebruecke. The elevation change between the forest in the background and the Steinle area on the other side of the tracks is  almost 2 inches, which would have resulted in a very step, odd-looking bridge.

Building up a shoulder along the hill for the Steinlehof access road

Instead, I built up a shoulder along the hill, which raises the access road to almost the same height as the forest. Since this doesn't have to support any weight, this is made from cardboard with some styrofoam bits underneath and covered in masking tape and Scuptamold.

Access road covered in Scuptamold

Looking north from Emsingen towards Steinlehof. In the back the Emsingen entry signal

When I filled in gaps around Steinlehof the last time, I left the building in place while the Scuptamold dried, which basically glued it in place. I didn't install lights, nor painted the building yet. Ooops.

Looking south on the dark side of Steinlehof. This view is only possible from camera

I managed to do touchups and paint the roof and most walls with the building in place. This took care of most of the plastic sheen and visible glue spots that bothered me. I will cut a hole from inside the hill to place some light inside the living area of Steinlehof.

Time to start thinking about a design for Steinlebruecke.

Clouds

Dark Clouds over Zurich seen from Dolder. Yet, it didn't rain.

Dolderbahn

The Dolderbahn is a cog wheel railway going from Zurich-Romerhof to Dolder Bergstation. While there's not much interesting up there for tourists (unless you're into super-expensive hotels), the view is quite nice. Here's a shot of the snow covered Alps taken from Dolder Bergstation.

Rapperswil

Schloss in Rapperswil 

Yes, we're enjoying ourselves

Glueck gehabt