Last night I made a post concerning the concept of centralized control and running your layout from a central control point, Much like a dispatcher. I want to thank everyone for their response. But it seems there was some confusion. When I started writing this as a response in the previous thread it became larger and deserving of its own thread. The main consusion stemmed from the kind of layout I want to build.
It seems that most everyone thinks that the layout in question is a run-around and switchem out layout like most walk around plans for one person tend to be. However since I live in Wyoming. I am looking at controlling a whole V&O sized or thereabout railroad by my self. Since being the locomotive engineer in this regard would not be the most enjoyable aspect for me, since I would have to be the engineer for every train. And thus spoiling its associated realism, I thought about controling the trains from a higher level. Such as the dispatcher. Loose car switching is really not my thing. (I have included provision for it, but its not the layouts main focus) I much like larger layouts where all sorts of different trains pass by on their way from hither and yon. Granted most of these large layouts, were walk around types with the traditional walk along with the train as the locmotive engineer style of control, but to do all that all these layouts that I like and thust want one of my own of approxamate size, need at least on the order of 5 or 6 people to operate a formal operationg session to the fullest enjoyable extent. A number of peple that just simply doesn’t exist locally.
In lander where I live there are 4 Model Railroaders. Two of them are not interested in coming and being sociable. So that leaves me and the other guy. He is interested in being sociable, but his views on model railroading are rather different from my own, in that formal operations consist of nursing a burbon and ginger and cracking the throttle and watching the trains go round. I c
have a look at http://www.cti-electronics.com/index.htm and other forms of computer control . i’m sure it could be set up so you would control which train has the right to use each block and the computer would drive the train based on that .
I’m not sure if the solution is to be busier than a one armed paper hanger, growing another head or two, or beating the bushes for some more operators. The challenge is to operate more trains over the given railroad which can be done with either DC or DCC. The problem in the real world is the little gremlins that creep in to gum up the works, derailments, parted couplers, etc.,etc… If we could dispatch train A to run from point A to point B , and train B to run from point B to point A, the dispatcher only has to deal with how the two get by one another between A and B, beside a “cornfield meet”.
We need to follow the lead of the railroads, while the crew size has been reduced significantly, over the road they still need a crew on hand to take care of the running of the trains. The role of the dispatcher is to put the trains over the rail road from point A to point B and point B to point A as efficiently as possible . The dispatchers job is not switching cars into a train, checking the cars or driving the locomotive, but rather making the arrangements for the trains and the route are set up to move between points. Unfortunately the dispatcher can not accomplishhis task if there is no one to run the locomotive, or the train has a derailment in the middle of the string of cars, or there is no sidingbetween point point A and B to accomodate two trains from passing one another.
My point is you need a number of ingredients to make the process work. If you have only you, that means that you are going to have to be the Chief Cook and the Bottle Washers as well until there is a crew of effective locomotive operators to move multiple trains over your rairoad. Wishing, DC/DCC, or anything else is not going to change the realities. The bright side of the picture is that you can have a great deal of fun being the Chief Cook running the show until you can lure someone else in to play the other roles. Unfortunately it is lonely at the top if there aren’t others to “run” with.
Make the most of what you have,
Depending on how you layout is structured, you may be able to have one train on auto-pilot, running in the background, while you control the other one, with a walk around control. Gary Hoover did this effectively on his previous layout.
Let me see if I understand the concept - what you want is several trains to auto-run while you issue the change orders to their intial programming as dispatcher. The engineer functions are to be pre-programmed and execute automatically but dispatching will be manual.
Assuming this analysis of the requirements is reasonably correct, the most promising technology I know of would be something like CMRI, which interfaces a computer to the various systems on the railroad. It can be done, although you would have to write your own software to “read” the railroad, display the situation, accept the dispatcher input, make the appropriate changes to the railroad, then read the railroad again, etc. A couple of issues immediately rear their head:
As Will pointed out, your railroad systems have to be bullet-proof or you are going to be hitting the master shutoff way too often.
There is no easy way to detect derailments, except possibly through predictive block status, and checking block status against predictions. This will add another layer of complexity to your software with accompanying increase in software bugs.
False status indications from block occupancy or turnouts - either negative or positive - will be disasterous.
Every place where a change can be made to the layout - throwing a turnout, changing a block toggle, changing a train’s speed and/or direction, etc - must have an interface to the computer that both can drive the change, and read when the change actually occurs. Cheating by changing the status of the device when the change command is issued won’t survive the gremlins. Accurate status is the holy grail that must be accomplished.
Debugging the software and the layout must be done simultaneously. You won’t have a lab or simulation to test the software against. So for every bug, you not only have to check all the usual hardware suspects, but also the software for logic and flow errors.
No you are reading way to much into it. That is more than even I want to get into.
Think like a walkaround layout. But with like a 1950s/1960s central control panel so I can run the layout when I am all by my self. Which I expect to be often. There will be a bang of Power Packs, or DCC throttles at this pannel to run the trains while I throw toggles and switches to make sure they all pass by eachother and not run into anything.
Since formal rialway operations is a big thing. Would running a layout from this point, Maybe by drawing cards with phrases that communicate information from the crew simulated crews to the dispatcher, be ran in such a fashion.
That is what I want to know. And would DCC or old style DC Block Cab Control be more appropriet?