Hi everyone, I hope this is in the correct area - if not, I apologise in advance. A week before Christmas, I decided to get out the HO train set that I had purchased some years back with the intention of determining whether I should keep it or put it on eBay. The set is the East Coast Pullman from Hornby. I set it up in a simple loop and watched the trains go around and around for a bit, then I turned it off but didn't pack it away. The next day I went back to it, watched the trains go around and around for a bit, then turned it off again. This went on for about a week with the train set running on some MDF boards on the floor. I decided that I had room in the corner of my study for a table to put it on, and so the plans for an 8x4 came together. A quick trip one day to the local hardware store and I had the materials to build a pine table with a marine ply top. This only took an afternoon to put together and set up in the house. Some builders foam board insulation on the top deadened much of the noise from the trains running. The next thing was to purchase some additional track - round and round was pretty dull. I downloaded some layout design programs and settled on AnyRail. Using this tool, I created a layout with two major loops, two minor loops and several turnouts. This also allowed me to create a picking list to take to the local train shop. Armed with some money I was given for Christmas, I purchased enough track and turnouts to set myself up. My first disappointment was discovering that all Hornby turnouts would have to be replaced with the equivalent electrofrogs. These had different dimensions to the Hornby turnouts too so I ended up redesigning part of the layout. I started looking into motor controls for the turnouts at this time too. I was convinced to purchase a Cobolt Classic - a sturdy looking piece of kit. I then visited a local hobby store and discovered that TAM Valley Depot made a kit that was better suited to my needs - especially considering much of it can be bought cheaply from China (servos & servo extension cables for example). The last bit has been all setting up the electronics to control it all and it's been a hell of a ride! The TAM Valley Octopus3 was dead easy to set up. The servos which drive the points were mostly straight forward. The wiring just goes everywhere and I have to spend some time fixing this or there will be no trouble shooting in the future. The Arduino was fascinating. I purchased a starter kit with a breadboard so I could play around and see how it worked. The Motor Shield for the Arduino which is used to generate the DCC++ signal (using the DCCpp_BaseStation) was easy enough to set up, once I had the correct pin jumped. Finally, getting it all set up and running from my PC was incredible. The first time the locomotive moved when I swiped the touch screen was such a thrill. I felt like I'd really achieved something! This afternoon I had 8 of the turnouts running under DCC control as well. The BaseStation code didn't need changing at all - follow the instructions and you should be right in a few hours. The Controller code required a lot of customisation - the layouts and buttons are all hard-coded so unless you have the same layout and locomotives a the designer, you're ok, but if not, you have to get into some java coding. I've been a software developer for 30 years and found no difficulty customising the controller. I can highly recommend this kind of project to anyone who is reasonably technically skilled and wants a bit of a challenge - you won't regret it. The next part of the project is installing the sensors to identify the location of the trains on the layout. I'll write some more if there is interest when I get to it.
I've always thought the Arduino sounded like something that could be a lot of fun to learn to use. Maybe this hobby will finally give me an excuse to look into it more.
Wolfye, I am in a similar project phase as yours, so it interests me to read your posts. What decoder do you use for your turnouts? Did you never consider solenoid turnout driving? What frightens me is that you have to use Java to program/configure your layout in JMRI Panelpro; I have not yet tried Panelpro, but I assume you use that part of the JMRI program? Is there no other way to insert your layout in JMRI? Let us know the progress on your layout? Kind regards, Erik
