Martijn Meerts

[Darklighter]

This would allow trains to stop in different positions depending on their length. This would use 6 out of 8 occupancy detector inputs.

 

The disadvantage is that I'm not sure if any program supports this in a decent fashion.

 

I know of at least one that does: Rocrail (shortin event; "to stop short trains in the middle of platforms.")

[Martijn Meerts]

I know of RocRail yes, but I'm not too happy with their UI design.. Because of the cross platform, it's very non-Mac on a Mac 

 

There's a good change I'll be using RocRail though, until I can get my own stuff up and running.. Which probably means I'll be using RocRail for "a while" ;)

[Martijn Meerts]

Tested some track laying yesterday, found out the Peco plastic rail joiners are crap =)

 

Not only do they not fit well on the code 55 track, they also mess up the whole extra/special sleepers that come with the turnouts. Considering they're also quite expensive, I wonder if I shouldn't just go with the good old Dremel method and cut the track.

[Martijn Meerts]

Did some more track laying and un-laying (because I forgot to solder the wires onto the track......), and while doing so I thought a bit more about how to divide the blocks into sections.

 

The image shows both modules with the station in place. The red bits of the station have a roof, the blue bits do not. The smaller red bits slope downwards, so it's not really usable platform space. The larger red block is the station building. The arrows are the direction the trains travel in past the platforms.

 

The trains that will be running on these modules are mainly single and double car DMU's such as Kiha 40's and the like. There will also be some smaller ones like the Tama Train and possible some rail busses (Kiha 01, 02 and 03, until they get re-assigned to the Ghibli modules if those ever get done ;)) A C11 with 3 cars will also make an appearance.

 

Keeping that in mind, I came up with the following:

 

- The dark green bits are stop sections for longer, loco hauled trains, such as the C11. In this case, the loco itself will actually stop past the platform, because the platforms are too short for the whole train.

 

- The light green bit is the stop section for both single and double car DMU's. The reason for it being the same stop section for both, is so that single car DMU's will stop along the covered part of the platform rather than be half on the covered and half on the uncovered part.

 

- The purple bit is the stop section for single car DMU's only. Again, this is so that they stop at the covered part of the platform.

 

- The blue bit is the stop section for double car DMU's. These are too long to fit along the covered platform, so they'll just use most of the platform. The 2nd car will then be along the covered platform.

 

 

In total, this will use up 7 outputs out of the 8 on the occupancy detector. I just need to figure out where exactly to put the plastic rail joiners. It sort of depends on the program that controls the layout. Some programs don't halt a train the moment it enters a stop section, but have it slowly come to a halt, other programs just stop the thing pretty much directly. Usually you can specify how far a train should continue driving in a stop section though, so it's better to have trains stop too early than have them stop too late. Too early is easily fixable using the software, stopping too late means physically moving the stop sections.