January 2019 Construction Journal

Week of January 1, 2019

After the big surge in work to get ready for the Christmas "open house" with the family coming to the house, I've taken a bit of a break. I've been getting things organized for the next wave of construction. The short list of what I need to do, without purchasing more items, is:

• Add feeders to remainder of track in sections L7-L9
• Finish track in engine facility and replace control panel with a clear plastic panel instead of the Masonite
• Design track plan for L5 industrial area
• Layout a quarter helix curve on spare plywood to estimate number of sheets to purchase
• Cut, install, and paint fascia from the material on hand. I decided to use black paint on the fascia and have black curtains on the bottom. 

Week of January 6, 2019

I got walloped by the flu but after recovering a bit, I laid down the three tracks that will be part of the engine/maintenance facility. When the caulk is dry, I'll be wiring these up with kill switches like the other two tracks in the area. However, I could see parking cars in these tracks as well as engines, so I may not use the kill switches much.

I got the tracks wired up in the engine facility and updated the control panel. The diagram below shows where I added feeders to ensure uninterrupted power flow.

I also added the three switches to the control panel. I plan to replace the control panel later when the fascia is installed, but this works for now.

Besides the track wiring, I also got two more sets of LED lights installed. I now have three strips (60 watts each) connected to my power supply. I can put one more strip on this 300 watt power supply before I buy another one.

Week of January 20, 2019

I've been taking a bit of a break from building the layout and have been focusing on the operating system for the layout. While I like how JMRI works, I wanted to have a system that was integrated with my existing web-based inventory and tracking system. As a result, I've built out an operations module that is somewhat customized for how I want to run trains. These are some of the factors at play:

• Simple enough that I can run trains by myself, or complex enough to support a group of operators
• Ability to track each car's location during the session
• Provide a sense of randomness to where cars are being delivered and how they are being used. 
• Ability to expand as I build out the layout and add more rolling stock and trains. 
• Eliminate as much of the manual work as possible. 

So far, the application can do the following:

• After assigning car demands to the industries, the system generates waybills for cars of particular types to go to those industries. 
• I can then build a train and have instructions assigned to that train to pick up and set out cars at the industries. 
• Cars that have been loaded or unloaded (after a predetermined number of "days") are picked up and sent either to another industry on the layout that needs a loaded or unloaded car, or put on manifest freights that are interchanging to destinations off the layout. 
• As the operator picks up or sets out cars, they have a web-based view and can mark those tasks as completed. Alternately, the dispatcher or traffic manager can mark them as complete after the train is done. 

Some of the additional features I need to add are:

• Assigning trains to be "partnered" with each other. For instance, the incoming coal train from Montana runs across the layout. When it completes, that same train becomes the returning empty coal train from Chicago going back to Montana. Each of these trains has a fixed consist of cars assigned to it, as well. 
• Enhancements to the pages to show how many outstanding waybills there are, how many waybills or cars are assigned to existing trains, etc. 

The goal is to allow operators to use small tablets instead of having to carry around paper with them. We'll see how that works in practice, though. I can always print off the train orders and handle things manually if people don't like the tablet approach.