Nothing helpful to add, just wanted to post that this is a sick layout and your progress is inspiring.
Fantastic Job! I still think a nice, deep, still pool in the river under the bridge would "reflect well" on the hidden under-structure of your curved bridge sections!
Thank you very much Mudkip Orange and BigJake, I'm really glad people enjoy the thread and this layout. I could do better with progress, but with family life and all, it's all I've got. Hopefully I can get more updates into the thread! So, besides running trains around the layout, now that I can, I've slowly started working on hooking up the four remaining turnouts to the control panel. The two turnouts that lead to the staging area at the back of the layout are Peco curved turnouts. Manual. Unfortunately, they don't sell these with switch motors already installed. Originally I was just going to use manual ground throws for these, and it was late in the project where I decided that no, I'd make these remote switches as well. So, I bought some Peco remote switches, but these are meant to be installed under the turnout. Too late! I can't do that anymore, the turnout is already installed and working nicely. So I decided to mount these beside the track with a pushrod.... Yeah, these things are ugly! But, notice how the fascia was already raised well above the level of the foam? I wanted the the track passing between two cliffs. So that remote switch is just going to be hidden by the terrain I'll be building in that area anyway. In the above photo, the switch is mounted and ready to be wired. Buried in the foam is a brass pushrod sliding in a brass tube. Basically the same way I did the manual ground throws in the yard way back when. I've since added the wiring and connected this to the control panel, and it works perfectly. The other curved turnout was a bit more impractical... I have very little space between the turnout an the track going to the second level of the layout. This would be difficult to hide with scenery, so I relocated the whole thing to the other side of that track, as seen below: Yep! much better. That one has also been wired and now ready to be buried in scenery. So yeah, all in all, I'm pretty happy with how these two worked out. When I build up the hills I'll keep the area around the switch machines clear and just "plug" the top with a removable lid of scenery in case I ever need to perform maintenance or replace one of the motors. So, right, two turnouts down, two to go... ...and those two are complicated little turnouts! At the throat of each reverse loop sits an Atlas turnout with remote switch. For continuous running, I need to be able to throw the turnout automatically when the train is returning from it's trip around the reverse loop. Well, the above photo shows the proof of concept prototype!! Yeah, it's a mess of wires right now, but I find each time I use a temporary breadboard I have to use three to four times the amount of wire connections than the final result. So what's happening in that photo? It's actually quite simple: I have four components plugged into the Arduino. First, two push buttons are simulating one of the momentary toggles that exist on the layout's control panel. I can manually switch between main and diverging tracks by pressing the buttons (e.g. flicking the toggle up or down). Second, two LEDs (red and green) are activated depending on whether Main or Diverging is selected. Again, this simulates the red and green LEDs on the layout's control panel. The LEDs are not seen in the photo, they are just out of frame on the right side. Third, there's a single two-channel SPDT relay. This isolates the Arduino from the power connecting the Atlas remote switch. We can see a spare Atlas remote switch near the top of the photo - it's not connected to any track. And finally, I have an IR emitter and an IR phototransistor sitting in the temporary piece of track, right next to the tank car. The Arduino checks the phototransistor and when it detects a car or locomotive above the track, it automatically throws the turnout. I only have the one IR sensor installed right now, but the real setup will have two, one on the main, the other on the diverging track. It works really well in this temporary setup. I even put in some ballast to make sure it would work. It's sensitive enough to detect the coupler, and will even detect the tank car in the middle when using a 10K Ohm resistor, despite the car being deep black. When I use a 5K Ohm resistor, it only detects the trucks. Which I end up using depends on how it checks out once in position on the real layout. With increased sensitivity, it means that reaching above the track could trip the turnout. In this test setup, at the most sensitive, my hand needs to be four-five inches above the track before it trips, which is probably fine. Anyway, enough for now, next pictures should be the final setup on the actual layout. Enjoy!
For not getting much done you are getting a lot done . A lot of good innovative ideas there, good work. Are you going to document and have code for the Arduino setup at some point? If I ever get far enough on my plans I have two places (maybe more) where what you are doing would work although I'd have to modify some to work with the servos I'm using and their controllers but see it working. Sumner
Sure, I'll post the component list and code once I'm done - it's nothing difficult really. It's mostly slow going because I am a newb at electronics, so I have to research and understand how to make stuff work.
Done! One of the turnouts is now automated! Okay, so it was quite a bit of work, but mostly because I got lost in wires, and had to redo the wires once or twice (grr!) So, in a previous post, I had a breadboard, a mess of wires and basically a working prototype. So the photo above is the start of moving the prototype to the the layout. First, I'm using an Arduino Nano instead of the Arduino Uno from the breadboard. Why? No good reason, the Uno and Nano are virtually identical except in size (same power requirements and same power restrictions). The teeny thing with the gold connector is the Nano. Now the Arduino has a lot of input/output pins, but one thing is lacks is multiple 5v and ground pins. And I figured I'd need at least eight wires to ground! So the little prototype board with the red and black headers is just that - a gratuitous amount of positive and negative headers to expand the Arduino with additional pins. I had barrettes of 40 pins, red and black, and just broke them in two to make two rows. Why two? we'll see later. The third circuit board is a two-channel SPDT relay. It will sit between the Arduino and the turnout, isolating the Arduino from the voltage required to power the turnout. The various wire harnesses I made to connect the three together. From left to right; a three pin harness to connect the control panel toggle to the Arduino; a two pin hardness to jump 5V and GND from the Arduino to the power circuit; and finally the four-pin harness to connect the Arduino to the relay. I use Dupont connectors.. they're easy to make, but can be maddening! The connectors don't click into place, and the friction fit is very light. Which is annoying when the wire is fairly stiff. Next time I'd rather use better connectors. Oh well, live and learn! Now, since I want to install the IR emitter and sensors in the track, I painted the section of track. I'm using Krylon Camouflage as the base coat. Same I used for the rail on the viaducts and bridges. Notice that I painted both locations, even though I'm really only working on the one at the front of the layout. And here we have the the IR emitter and sensor already installed. A bit visible, but once ballast is in place, might be more hidden. I didn't take any pictures of how I assembled the wires. Basically, the emitter (clear LED) is wired with a 10K Ohm resistor. The phototransistor (sensor/black) is a bit tricky, but involves a 220 Ohm resistor parallel to the anode. Again, a later post I'll try to explain how to wire everything. The above photo shows how it looks under the table. See that circuit with the double row of red/black pins? Yeah, that's why the two rows of pins; I share the same board for both Arduinos. The Arduinos are stuck to a piece of styrene using double sided tape - unfortunately they don't have mounting holes. And so yeah, it's a mess of wires!!! And the Dupont connectors were hair pulling difficult to stay put, but that's because the wires are so stiff. But I did what I could to keep it as tidy as possible. The three wires to the left (red/green/black) are connected to the Atlas turnout; and the red/black wire exiting right go to the CDU to power the turnouts. I power the Arduino using a USB cable. I have a powerbar attached to the underside of the layout, where I plug in the NCE powercab, the A/C adaptor for the turnouts, and the 12V adapter for the lights. Bonus, the powerbar has two 5V USB ports! super convenient to power the Arduinos. Anyway, I'm out of time! I'll be back to post the Arduino code and try to explain how to wire this together.
Just a quick update while the food is cooking... Couldn't post it earlier, because it was uploading, but made a small video... Just shows two trains going through the detection area, automatically switching the turnout, and then manually toggling the turnout to back one train through the detection area. Might also notice that I still haven't quite got the auto-reverser set right - the dash-8 momentarily shorts as it reaches the entrance to the reverse loop About the manual toggle on the control board. I've set it up in such a way that the toggle does not trigger the turnout if a train is above one of the IR sensors. Enough for now! I'll think about how I'll try to explain how to connect everything, maybe for next post! For now, here's the actual code uploaded to the Arduino. Code: /* IR detection, turnout control Stephane Savard December 19 2020 */ #define MAIN 1 #define DIVERGING 2 const int mainRelayPin = 2; const int divergingRelayPin = 3; const int mainTogglePin = 4; const int divergingTogglePin = 5; const int mainLEDPin = 7; const int divergingLEDPin = 8; const int mainIRSensorPin = A0; const int divergingIRSensorPin = A1; const int minimumIRDetectionValue = 100; // variables: int previousState = -1; int currentState = MAIN; // the setup function runs once when you press reset or power the board void setup() { pinMode(mainTogglePin, INPUT_PULLUP); pinMode(divergingTogglePin, INPUT_PULLUP); pinMode(mainIRSensorPin, INPUT); pinMode(divergingIRSensorPin, INPUT); pinMode(mainLEDPin, OUTPUT); pinMode(mainRelayPin, OUTPUT); pinMode(divergingLEDPin, OUTPUT); pinMode(divergingRelayPin, OUTPUT); digitalWrite(mainLEDPin, LOW); digitalWrite(mainRelayPin, LOW); digitalWrite(divergingLEDPin, LOW); digitalWrite(divergingRelayPin, LOW); Serial.begin(9600); } // the loop function runs over and over again forever void loop() { delay(100); // read input pins int mainIRValue = analogRead(mainIRSensorPin); int divergingIRValue = analogRead(divergingIRSensorPin); int isMainToggled = (digitalRead(mainTogglePin) == LOW); int isDivergingToggled = (digitalRead(divergingTogglePin) == LOW); // Set MAIN or DIVERGING if (mainIRValue > minimumIRDetectionValue){ currentState = MAIN; } else if (divergingIRValue > minimumIRDetectionValue){ currentState = DIVERGING; } else if (isMainToggled){ currentState = MAIN; } else if (isDivergingToggled){ currentState = DIVERGING; } if (currentState != previousState){ previousState = currentState; switch (currentState) { case MAIN: Serial.println("Set MAIN"); // turn diverging led indicator and relay off digitalWrite(divergingLEDPin, LOW); digitalWrite(divergingRelayPin, LOW); // turn main led indicator and relay on; relay is only // turned on momentarily to prevent burning out the coil. digitalWrite(mainRelayPin, HIGH); digitalWrite(mainLEDPin, HIGH); delay(150); digitalWrite(mainRelayPin, LOW); break; case DIVERGING: Serial.println("Set DIVERGING"); // turn main led indicator and relay off digitalWrite(mainLEDPin, LOW); digitalWrite(mainRelayPin, LOW); // turn diverging led indicator and relay on; relay is only // turned on momentarily to prevent burning out the coil. digitalWrite(divergingRelayPin, HIGH); digitalWrite(divergingLEDPin, HIGH); delay(150); digitalWrite(divergingRelayPin, LOW); break; default: // do nothing. break; } } }
Those jumper wires are CLEAN. Underneath the layout looks pretty slick too. I like the Dupont connectors because of all the different sizes and configurations they have, but I think you are right, there needs to be a way to make them more permanent. I used them to connect lighting strips through passenger car diaphragms, which is nice because you can pull the cars apart easily to put them back in the box.
So I've been trying to figure out how to describe the wiring of this project. So lets start with each of the components. Arduino Uno or Nano, doesn't really matter which you use. I just happened to find that buying a three-pack of Arduino Nano (Elegoo brand) on Amazon was cheap. A two-channel SPDT relay board. The one I use is a Grove / Seeed brand (not a typo). I got this off Amazon as well. Two matched pairs of IR emitter/sensors. I got the IR204C-A and PT204-6B (part numbers 1080-1077-ND and 1080-1151-ND from Digikey). These emit/sense in the 940 nm range, which I was led to believe is in the spectrum farthest from visible light and therefore is much less likely to get interfered with false readings. Buy more than two pairs, "just in case" Resistors. 10K and 220 ohms for the IR stuff. For your LEDs, well, it depends on the LEDs you use. Amazon yet again; I just bought one of those big packs that will last a loooong time. The pack I have is composed of 23 different values, each in small bags and well labelled. LEDs - I bought a big box of various 3mm LEDs off Amazon a while back (Haraqi brand). Yellow, blue, white, red, green, etc. Been using the Green and Red for the control panel. Whatever you buy will tell you what you need for resistors. e.g., in my case, the red have a forward voltage of 1.87V and the green 1.99V. Using that, and knowing the Arduino outputs 5V, I use a 1500 ohm resistor for the red for an output of roughly 2.1mA. 200 ohm resistor for green, driving it at 15 mA. Why am I not driving them at the same current? Because testing on the bread board showed me that this was the current levels that gave me roughly the same luminance output. If I drove them both at 15mA, the red would be super bright compared to the green. Wire and connectors - up to you how to want to connect everything. Okay, the code is already in the previous post, so you can refer to that, and load it into the Arduino of your choice. But the connections would be as follows. Lets start with the easiest, the two IR emitters. Solder some wires to the LED leads, making sure to include a 220 ohm resistor on the cathode (shortest leg). Connect the cathode to the Arduino's GND pin, and the anode to 5V pin. You will be connecting a lot of stuff to both the 5V and GND pins, so you'll need a way to gang them up - I'll leave the method up to you (you can see my solution in the previous posts). The IR sensors a bit more tricky. The cathode on the sensor is connected to the 5V pin. Not a typo! yes, the cathode is indeed connected to 5V. The anode connects to one of the analog inputs (either A0 or A1 if using the code I posted), and also connects to GND through a 10K ohm resistor. See the image below, I used www.circuit-diagram.org to make the little schematic to illustrate how this connection is made. One of the IR sensors is connected to analog pin A0 (for the main track), and A2 (for the diverging track) * note: the diagram shows one of the wires going to Vin, that's incorrect, it should connect to 5v - sorry about that. Next is the LEDs for the control panel. Connect the cathode to GND using the appropriate resistor. The LEDs' anodes are connected to digital pins 7 for the main track and 8 for the diverging track. By the way, the pins are all defined in the code I posted, right at the beginning. You could change them if you needed to. The two-channel SPDT relay comes with a four pin ribbon wire. It has red, black, yellow and white wires. You'll need to snip off one side and attach some connectors for the Arduino. Red connects to 5V. Black connects to GND. White and Yellow are the signals and connect to pins 2 (main) and 3 (diverging) on the Arduino. The other side of the relay is for the turnout. Again, a little diagram: I'm showing this using an Atlas turnout with three wires (green, black and red). The relay has six screw terminals, two sets each of Normally-Open (NO), Signal (SIG) and Normally-Closed (NC). Whatever you're using to power your turnouts, connect the positive to both NOs, and the negative side to both NCs. As for the turnout, connect the black wire to any of the NC terminals, then connect the red and green wires to the SIG terminals. I can't remember which turnout wire goes to which SIG terminal, but if you see your turnout snapping to the wrong track, reverse the wires Finally, the toggle switch. Well, I'm using momentary SPDT toggles (middle is off). The middle pin is wired to Arduino GND. The two remaining pins to Arduino pins 4 (main) and 5 (diverging). Okay, enough! I'm not even sure if anyone will make any use of this, so I've rambled long enough. Feel free to ask me questions if you're confused about any of it. There might be easier ways to do this. Heck, there might be commercial products that do this. But that was my little project. Now I'm off to repeat the above for my second reverse loop turnout. Enjoy! EDIT: the IR sensor diagram had the diode pointing the wrong way! fixed it.
Thanks Sumner! I thought I had changed it to public, so I went back and looked and realized there is a save button. oops! Should be fixed now. Also, the little circuit diagram for the emitter shows a wire going to Vin! that should be 5V (two pins above!) I'll add a note next to the diagram since I no longer have the schematic.
I think this is what you want... If you can still edit your post you would copy this into it and I could delete this possibly, Sumner
Yup, that was it, but I can't edit the post anymore it seems. It's fine, at least you put up the corrected design, thank you for that!
This past few days I've completed the second Arduino controlled turnout (the one at the back of the layout). No pictures, it's identical to the first one really. The code changed a tiny bit. Arduinos don't really remember their last settings since last powered. I mean I think there's a way to write to non-volatile memory, but I believe it's one of those things that you can only write a set number of times. So what happens in my case is that when powered up, the turnouts just default to Main. So what's the change? The second Arduino delays itself at startup by an additional second of time. That way, the first turnout snaps to Main on power-up, allows the CDU to charge itself back up, and then the second turnout snaps to Main. Ok, so what now?! The track is pretty much done unless I find some little corrections that need to be made. I did walk to the hardware store today and picked up a sheet of 2x8 foam, 1.5" thick. My next step could be the terrain itself. I also need to deal with the locomotives. See, right now I have six locomotives. All have some problem or another. Well, the Kato ES44AC doesn't have a real problem. In fact, it's probably one of the only ones that runs the best through the layout - mostly. See, it's my only non-sound locomotive. As such, it's probably the only one that has no capacitors at all. So when it enters or exits one of the auto-reversing loops, and the polarity changes, it hesitates. It's not the end of the world, and the fix will be to upgrade it to sound someday. But not now, I don't want to spend the money just yet. Second is a GMD-1 from Rapido. I love this little loco! I bought it as a switcher for the yard. It runs super smooth too, very quiet, very nice. Except that it isn't able to go through the yard without stalling on one turnout of another, not unless it's moving much faster than I'd like. Invariably, when one truck is on the frog, the other wheels don't seem to pickup. The wheels are clean (I spent a good portion of today cleaning wheels). But I think sometimes the wheels are lifting off the track. I think it's maybe the wheel base, but it looks fine, as seen above. Each of the four axles have just about the same reading. The one thing about this locomotive is that the fuel tank barely clears the rails (there are times a piece of paper will not fit underneath). I have a feeling that at times, when a wheel dips into a frog, the fuel tank bottoms out and causes the other truck to lift off the rails. It doesn't help that the fuel tank was mounted a little crooked at the factory. Unfortunately, to take off the fuel tank and reseat it would mean completely disassembling the entire locomotive, since the exploded parts list shows a screw holding it in place. I have no idea what to do about this one. Then the two brand new Rapido Dash-8s. Well, those run great, even better than the Kato! My biggest problem is the shorts on the frogs. If one crawls across a turnout, then on many of turnouts, the locomotive shorts and the NCE circuit protector lights up. It seems to happen just as the wheels come across the point where the two rails meet at the frog. Again, here's a picture of the gauge... maybe I'm reading this wrong? One thing that bothers me is how loose the wheels are in the trucks. See how the middle axle is all the way to the right, and the bottom axle is shifted left? Not sure if this might be part of the problem too. I just don't have the experience to figure out how to correct this problem either. I've read an article in the MRH magazine about using a little varnish on the rails right at the frogs, but I'm not quite sure I want to be mucking about with the turnouts at this point. Okay, that leaves the two Intermountain SD-40w locomotives. Those are a disaster. I broke a few of the handrails, entirely my clumsy hands. Man are they fragile. But I've always disliked the shells because they were never properly glued together. They look hunch-backed! The cab sits at a slight angle with a visible gap at the bottom. I also have trouble coupling anything to them because the coupler pockets are hanging on by a thread (half the time they are dragging). They came from the factory mostly broken and have been getting worse. Now, one of the two doesn't run right. Especially at mid speed, the train visibly jerks along as it rapidly speeds up and slows down. Honestly, the SD40s I feel like a lost cause. I tend to feel bad each time I look at them for having been dumb enough to buy a second after the first one's shell was so badly assembled at the factory. So yeah, I've been trying to figure out how to get at least the GMD-1 and Dash-8s running perfectly.
Which locomotives are in the "Once Around the Layout" video? After 2 years or so, it was nice to see the video. I have been waiting for it for a very long time Your attention to detail and patience is something I do not possess. Looking forward to future updates! Good luck! And we all have these problems from the smallest layout to the largest. Very frustrating too
Thank you in2tech! Those were the Intermountain SD40-2w. I cheated on the coupler by placing the bad coupler between the locomotives Back then when I made the video I did not yet own the Dash-8s, which are able to pull a string of seven cars up my cliff of a slope all alone. Here's the worst of the hunchback, though both have the problem. The entire frame is bent because of that bad assembly. And everything is glued together. Can also see some of the broken handrails (on this side, it's on the front, behind and in front of the cab). So broken handrails are my own clumsy fingers, but the stupid bent came free with the locomotive. Bonus, look at the little part glued in next to the window above the "4". This is on the second sd40.. the coupler is nearly falling off. I think the screw hole that holds it together is stripped. Been like that since I bought it, and just been getting worse. That I can eventually fix by solidly gluing the coupler pocket into place. It's on my TODO list. I also recently bought a set of Gold Medal stanchions for EMD engines and very thin brass rod at the local hobby shop. The idea is that eventually I will completely take apart the shells apart, clean them up, and attempt to reassemble them correctly, at which point I'd repair the couplers and make new handrails. However that's not for now, I first want to get the rest of the locomotives running perfectly. The mechanisms don't run quite as quietly as the Rapidos or the Kato, but in general they do run okay. It's just this very slight "oscillation" thing that bugs me a bit about one of them, but I can live with that honestly. Probably not noticeable when consisted together either. So yeah, sorry for the rant In the end everyone probably encounters the same things, but I'm still fairly "new" to model trains. I don't have decades of experience - I have two years, of which I've had a completed track for only the past month. I mean I know no-one around that's into trains, and I've not really seen anyone else's layout except on youtube! So it's difficult to know what is "normal". Actually, the only other person that's seen my layout that's into trains, hasn't really run trains in years, and only in HO. He looks at what I've done so far and mostly his comments is that N-scale appears to be very very "finicky" He's used to just sticking a HO engine (DC) on a layout and seeing it run perfectly.
I found the following video a good help for me..... After a great tip on here I designed a .... .... puller you can print out (if you have a printer) and use on the loco wheels .... http://1fatgmc.com/RailRoad/Locos-1/page-3.html https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4652687 Looking at your wheels and gauge it looks like they might be just on the tight side and I can't find it but I think I remember reading that it might be better to have them slightly on the wide side. Hopefully someone else will comment on that. I know all about being all alone physically but thankfully there are great forums like this one, Sumner
Well, I'm currently printing a set. I remember having to fix the gauge on one loco a while back, and I just used the twist method. But it'll only take an hour to print this, and looks cool! I did shorten it slightly to use less resin.
If those were brand new locomotives, that is very sad? I still like watching your progress. I have a 2 x 4 layout and have all kinds of problems. Mainly cause I am lazy, and am always changing it around, and can never actual decide a permanent layout plan. Maybe one day! I have trouble staying focused on it. But it is so small, at least I don't have to worry about a lot of stuff. I also have another 2 x 4 piece so I can make an L at times. But takes up a lot of room in my small space I have! And the big problem for most if not all layouts, switches. We love them and hate them at the same time. Or I do! Btw, your switching panel is awesome Good luck in the future!
