Empty Nester

On Monday we packed up the car and drove to Sydney with my son’s possessions.  We overnighted in Beresfield.  Tuesday night we unpacked his stuff at his share house in Glebe, and we drove to our hotel.  The Hotel was just about a 500m walk from his house.  I was amazed that when driving down Glebe Point Road there were tram tracks in the bitumen!  I knew that there was the old Tramshed a few km away, but I had no idea that trams ran down that road.  I later walked to the Tram Shed, and there is a tram sitting in one of the roads in the shed.  There is still plenty of track embedded in the car park.  My son starts work in about 3 week's time down in Sydney.

The Tram in the Tramsheds

A Three way in the carpark

More rails in the footpath

A sign to its past

I took the opportunity on Wednesday to catch the tram to Central and watch the Indian Pacific arrive into platforms 1, 2 and 3 over an approximate 45 minute period.  I find it very perplexing that the shuffling that occurs once the passengers have boarded and the various consists on the platforms depart to the outskirts of the station and the loco that brought that train in, goes to another platform to remove the next section of the train to outside the platform.  This complex shunting movement seems over complicated.

The main board at Central

Ther arrivals board showing the three sections on the IP

The first section arrived, and disconnected the locos.  They ran to the end, while the shunter changed the points

The Locos are running around the consist in platform 1.

The second part, arrived in Platform 3, with the second train loco.

The Locos from the first consist, attached at the front and are pushing the carriages back to the stop blocks in Platform 1.

The third consist arrives in Platform 2.

This section was the last to arrive, but first to leave.  Then loco then follows the section out and then attaches to the cars in Platform 3.

This section in Platform 3 leaves, and loco follows the train out.  No doubt this then goes over to Platform 1 and then takes that section out of the platform to the yard where they are all joined up.

The station Schematic of Central

On Thursday I caught a train from Central to Circular Quay so I could ferry over to Greenwich, as I wanted to walk past my father's family home in Chisolm Street.  I took a couple of photos and then walked back to the ferry terminal for the trip back to the city.  I had a good chat to a couple of old Fisherman casting off from the jetty.  They were having great success and go there4 every Thursday.

On Friday we heard from Arthur, that a local hobby shop, fairly close to us in Brisbane – HobbyOne had closed its doors.  It appears that it is doing mail order.

We drove back today from Sydney and normal programs have resumed in the household, all be it with one person down.

More Control Panel Progress

So I have been having fun with my control panel coding and incorporating an LCD display panel into the mix.  Basically I started by writing code to test the LCD display.  I then moved to adding a series of text outputs that follows the testing of the LED lights on the panel.  All the LEDs get exercised to ensure that they all work and their wires are all connected.  I have also incorporated a self-test switch on the control panel to be run during startup of the Panel and Arduino.  When the switch is set, the Arduino advises what addresses are readable on the I2C bus, and then it does the exercising of all the LEDs on the panel.  When the self-test switch is not set, the Arduino just sets the Control Panel to its initial state and then it starts running the layout.

Late on Monday night, I was having some issues with some panel switches not working correctly.  So I went back testing the various point control switches, did some re-wiring, and the control panel switch and hold switches all work perfectly.  I found a couple of typos during the testing, when the logic says set yellow signal, then I go and set the green signal, Doh!.  Some people are just dumb!  I then copied that code in a couple of places, so I had to change those snippets as well.

I was having issues with the operation of the UP 2 signal and its Shunt Ahead aspect and the two routes to other tracks - the DOWN track and the BRANCH.  So I bit the bullet and rewrote that whole section of code.  It worked so much betterer.  Hehehe!  There was an issue that the train coming out of the siding, and one going into the siding would reset the signals after the code cancelled them (set them to stop) once the train exited the track.  But I soon fixed that logic error.  Next test was for me trying to get the train from the UP track to shunt to the DOWN track and go to the BRANCH.  I realised that I had commented out the code for the Down and Branch logic while just testing the UP logic.. So I uncommented that out and got stuck in.  I did a few more tests, changed the location of some delays in the code, removed a couple of boolean flags from the logic, and I think the UP code is now 99.5% accurate.  I’m sure I will find a bug somewhere in the future, but every test I threw at it, seemed to work.  So the focus now turns to the DOWN trains and their code.

As work on the panel logic progresses, I again realised that the UP code does not match the DOWN code.  So I upgraded the DOWN code by copying the UP code and changing names to protect the innocent.  I think I have DOWN signals 1, 3 and 4 all ironed out and identical between the UP and DOWN sides.  I will take a bit of break and get back to DOWN signal 2 in a while.  I have ordered some more Arduino stuff online and so I need for this to arrive in the post over the next week or two.  One of the issues that I think I am about to hit is that after adding the next 4 IR detectors (for my DOWN Signals), it appears that I am potentially stressing the power limit output of the Arduino MEGA.  My research suggested that an IR detector would pull about 20ma each.   I measured one and got a figure of 38ma for just one when using the 5V supply pin.  I switched this to the 3.3V pin and got about 18ma.  So the thinking was to offload the control of the IR detectors to a number of slave Arduino input boards on the I2C bus.  However, I could not find anything suitable.  I went looking and found out that I could just have say 10 IR detectors controlled from one Arduino UNO and the other 11 IR detectors controlled by another Arduino UNO.  NO need for special input boards.  I can then give these Arduinos an address on my I2C bus, like 2 and 3, and they will power up the IR detectors.  If this is still too much power for a UNO to supply, I will further break the bus down into UP, DOWN, BRANCH + SIDING and Dual Gauge offload Arduinos.  My Arduino MEGA will link to the Arduino UNOs on the I2C bus with a common GND reference.  The MEGA will poll the UNOs for their IR detector statuses and send that to the Master MEGA.  The MEGA will then take action and light the various White detection LEDs on the control panel.  In theory this is all child’s play.  In practice, it may not be.

While going through all these tests, opening up the panel and closing it again, I worked out that my self-test feature is not testing the 16 panel mounted switches.  I’m thinking that I need to verify that every panel switch is working in one direction, then ask the operator to change each switch to its opposite position and I will test again.  I will then ask that the switches be returned to their normal start up positions.  If I can’t read a different result from the two switch positions for each switch, then I have an issue with one of those switches.  Some of the issues I am having with the control panel is that a wire comes off a switch and my sensors are not reporting things correctly, and thus will not work as expected.  I then have to do through the consol log to verify various values of some variables.

This arvo while reading some stuff online, I realised that I think I can implement a SPAD feature on the control panel logic.  I will think about this a bit more and report back in the future.

Side Trip to Sydney

So late last week and early this week, I was in Sydney with the family.  We were looking at places to rent in inner Sydney for my son.  I recon I walked close to 30Km over the 4 days on which we were there.  We also caught some busses, trains and trams.  Alas we did not find something, but later this week, he looks like he had found a nice place near Glebe.  It might be either a bus, or light rail to work, but he could walk on some days – and certainly walk home on some days to save a few bucks and also get some exercise.

Standing at Wolli Creek platform

Looking into the harbour

Looking at Circular Quay

When I got I back home and resumed work on the Control Panel for the future exhibition layout, I wired up all the special LEDs on the panel, including the signals in the siding, the four shunt ahead signals and the 2 route indicator signals.  I was amazed, when I started soldering this up on Thursday and Friday, because when I got around to testing them on Friday everyone worked first time.  That is a bit unusual for me!

So focus now turns to moving back to the first cut of the testing program, with just 5 IR detectors wired up.  Once this seems to be working, I will switch over from a Arduino UNO to an Arduino Mega and continue the testing.  I will spend time working on the inputs from the various switches on the control panel and interfacing these with the Arduino.  Another rabbit hole that will throw a spanner in the works is testing my Arduino LCD screen.  This is a 20 character x 4 line screen.  My plan is to test writing text to it, and then incorporate some messages to the screen if the Signalman does something stupid, I can inform him.  That could be something like throwing the points for a crossover or a siding without first setting the signals to stop first.

I am also thinking of having a self-test on the control panel where every LED is exercised before the Arduino gets into operational mode.  I might also write messages as to what we are doing/testing as we go through the process.

More Ops Sessions Fixes and Signal Panel Progress

I had to continue my list of fix ups on Monday morning, this last week.  I started with my Bachmann Tamper.  It would run on DC but not DCC.  So I checked CV 19 = it was not in a consist.  I checked CV 29 and it returned 115?  What?  So I reset it to 0 and then set up its address again – 083 – and it was running.   This time the CV29 was a decent number.  I think I have had this happen before.  It must have been a short somewhere had scattered the decoder's brains.  But it is all good now.  

I had a another loco - 4894 - a reasonably new Powerline loco that was causing some issues and I tried to fix it.  During the recent Operations Session I removed a nail and a small screw from under the loco and I thought it might have another one inside.  So I pulled it apart, reset the loco and it was running well.  So this loco is a bit of a problem.  It ran in the wrong direction.  So I reversed the bit in CV 29 and it ran correctly, but the headlights now come on in the wrong direction of travel.  So I set up the two CV’s for the Output 1 and Output 2 in the reverse direction of travel and with dimming on F4 and all was good.  So that loco has been put back into service on one of the stock trains.

I checked the headset plug-in-point at Grafton Yard, and it was working, so there was no more to do.  Bill had DM’ed me on Saturday night and advised that one of the plugs in the plug-in-points at Cassino had been pushed through the panel.  I’ve had this happen before, so I just add a styrene shim in front and reattach it and all is good.  About 2 minutes work.  I had an issue with the point control for track 4 at the southern end of Clapham Yard.  So I thought I’d try direct entering the point motor address and it would not throw the curve route.  So it was either the output of the Point Controller or the point motor.  I looked at the point motor first and the common wire had come off one of the terminals.  So a quick solder and that was back working.  I also had an issue with the track power into tracks 2 and 3 at Acacia Ridge Yard – also the southern end.  This small section of track is fed directly from the point.  I got some sandpaper into the point between the stock rail and the point blade.  It was now working.  I then ran the train a bit further in track 3 and it went dead.  I looked up the line a bit further and I noticed that a crossover point was set to crossover.  I turned that point to straight and the loco moved.  Looks like I added this crossover and never added the jumper around the point.  So that was added and that section of track is now powered and now works irrespective of the point setting.  This section of track is where the 4 sugar wagons get dropped off during an Ops Session.

While I had the soldering iron going, I went to Cassino and switched two wires on a control panel for various lights in that area.  I had a car’s headlights and street lights labelled incorrectly.  I switched the wires and now they work according to the descriptions on the panel. Before my next Ops Session, I think I need to install some more layout street lights and control these with various switches on the layout fascias.  I think I will add two lights to West Street at Old Cassino and two lights to Fairy Lane just outside of Fairy Hill Crossing Loop.  But I think I’m out of miniature switches.  So ebay might get some more business from me.  I have ordered some more switches and a stack of LED street lights, so in a couple of weeks, I will get around to installing these on the layout.

There was mention on a timetable card that maybe one of the trains needed to come into track 1 at Acacia Ridge instead of track 2.  A review of the timetable shows that this logic was indeed correct,  Just 5 minutes before train number 18 was due to arrive, train 7A gets to track 2 and drops off some steel wagons in track 2.  So we have probably never had this issue because train 18 has been really late and the track has been cleared by the shunt train number 70.  So new timetable cards have been printed for train 18 advising the new arrival track.  I also added an extra line to the timetable card for train 7A to cover his shunting that occurs from 9:00pm until 9:10pm in track 2.  This tells the North Coast Controller in his string line diagram that train 7A is hanging around for a few more minutes in that track.  I also had feedback that one of the staff machines was turning off and on, but that occurs if there is a train running through a set of points and causing a short in a power district.  I checked out the three staff machines for this section, and all were working correctly.  Someone was just being too cautious. 

On Tuesday I had some success with my future control panel.  I identified one of my Arduino Port Expanders was not working.  I also identified that I had wired some jumper leads incorrectly.  So I fixed these jumpers, added the correct drop down resistors to the network and replaced the bad Port Expander, and wouldn’t you know it, everything on the I2C bus was reporting its address correctly.  Happy with my progress, I did some more shed work.  I found a loose wire off behind one of the Staff machine panels at Clapham Yard.  I also started running some narrow gauge trains.  I was running one from Fisherman Islands and one from Acacia Ridge.  I am going through the narrow gauge timetable, identifying what wagons will be placed in what sidings.  I have some fixing up of some trackwork, particularly in Acacia Ridge Yard.  I added some dual gauge points to a section and now the narrow gauge track does not have power.  So on Wednesday I fixed the staff machine wiring at Clapham Yard.  I also found the wire that had come off the narrow gauge track at Acacia Ridge Yard.  So all is now good.

Now turning my attention back to the Future exhibition layout's signalman's control panel.  I added the remaining connections to the white track detection LEDs on the panel and changed my test program and I had further success.  They are all working very nicely.  I then got the UP signals all working.  Next was the Down Signals.  There was some weird things occurring and it was not until I looked at my initial definitions that I left out signal output 3.  After that was fixed they worked brilliantly.  Next was the Branch line signals.  I think I had a bad green LED.  So that was replaced and then they worked too.  I added in the last two Port Expanders to the I2C bus and everything stopped working.  It looked like that the last one had an issue.  So I swapped it out for another Port Expander and it then joined the I2C bus.  So I then tested the Down Dual Gauge signals and they worked.  Then it was the turn of the UP Dual Gauge.  I had one Green LED not light up.  A quick check revealed that its common on that LED was not wired up.  I soldered that and all was good.  So next week’s job is to now wire all the shunt signals, the two sidings signals and the branch indicator signals. 

This Signalman’s Control Panel might just actually work.

Wednesday Walk

On a Wednesday I usually walk from my place to past the rail bridge and return and get a good 6.3km of exercise in.  This last Wednesday I heard a toot of a horn, just as I was walking under the rail bridge.  I thought that might be a train going past Barry's place.  So I waited a few seconds, and heard what I thought was a train approaching.  I think it was pretty obvious that someone was tooting Barry as the train was heading northbound.  I just had time to get my phone out and snapped a couple of shots.