Justice City Layout Build

[JusticeCity]

Hi,


For the people who don't know me, I am a retired jack of all trades and sciences with a lifelong dream of actually completing a layout. I've started and scrapped three previous layouts because of all sorts of excuses, all which you have used yourselves. This time I'm determined to complete this layout or die trying.


It all started as a small diorama based around the SWSM Shipyard, then into large diorama based on the SWSM Twin Mills and Logging kits. i slowly realised it became dull, repeative and did not reflect the environments I knew and loved. The SWSM kits are western in style with bland earth soil colours that lacked the bright vibrant tones I grew up with. So I sold off all the SWSM (other ones I did not need) kits and built structures on eBay. This was a hard decision as I had invested in them and lived the quality of the kits, but they just would not fit into the layout.


So with a fresh (re)start having done major renovations on the garden all summer, I can focus on building the layout. I have already hit some snags and will get to them in later posts.


That's all for now.

[GPdemayo]

Sounds like you have a plan Marty.....and plans and direction are good things. I keep modifying what I want to do and think I have settled on a plan, only to find it won't work or can't be done with the space available.

I know what you mean about the kit designs and how they seem to be more appropriate to a certain area of the country. FSM, FOS and SRMW all have great kits, but they are very New England oriented and don't fit, without heavy modification, on layouts whose setting is other parts of the country.

I have those kits and I can appreciate the time you have invested in putting them together. Luckily, I have decided to do a mining and timber operation that will incorporate those type of structures.

Good luck with your new direction and I look forward to seeing your progress. 

[jerryrbeach]

Marty,


I'm looking forward to following your layout construction. 

[Zephyrus52246]

I love watching others build layouts.  But it does remind me that I haven't worked on mine for awhile.    

Jeff

[S&S RR]

I will be following along. I had a couple false starts before I finally decided on plan which will take the rest of my life to implement.

[JusticeCity]

The more the merrier...


Now the sage begins...


I decided that I was NOT going to start from scratch but do a change in direction and strategy. I come from a computer control theory background, so the layout MUST be computer controlled. So getting the track work set out and the blocks, sensors, etc was very important to get the granularity I wanted. Getting the track work set and working was my biggest pain in the lower part of my back, literally. It took days to get every handled part of the track in gauge, level and working flawlessly (he says knowing that is not true).





The hand made turnouts were a crazy pain. I had a #5 turnout jig, but I needed #4 turnouts to fit everything into the space I have limited the layout. I thought of buying a #4 jig, but I fell on the lower part of my back when I saw the shipped price. So I made my own from a chunk of pine and the template from Fasttrack's web site. It work quite well, so I sold my #5 jig so I would not be tempted to extend the layout.





However, not everything came up roses. I mistakenly used the #5 Fasttrack form point tools to make the frog points. Boy that was a big mistake as it caused all the #4 switches I made go out of gauge. It took 2-3 hours per switch to get everything back into tip top shape. The approach to the point needed to be adjusted, the point shape and gauge was a filing nightmare and let alone the exit from the diverting route being rather tight. I think I ended up with a #4.1 switch after all the filing, unsoldering, re-soldering, filing testing, etc. Maybe spending the $200 CDN would have been worth it.


Here is what it looks like now,





A bit closer look at one of the points,





I then questioned the gauge of al the railroad and found many areas had slipped out of gauge. Maybe because of heat/cold or the mid-night elf I keep on hearing. So every inch of the 30+ feet of the track and 10 turnouts was measured with a NMRA thingy. Then spiking, un-spiking, re-spiking measuring went on for days. In the end I have a reasonable belief that it all is good. So I ran the GP 44 Ton switcher around is various directions and all was ok, however, to-day I found out it is jumping track a one point in the layout.


I will look into that problem sometime in the future. Right now I need to get the documentation in order to help fix any issues that will come up with the automation.

[NEMMRRC]

I'm looking forward to progress on your layout.

Jaime

[vinceg]

I then questioned the gauge of al the railroad and found many areas had slipped out of gauge. Maybe because of heat/cold or the mid-night elf I keep on hearing. So every inch of the 30+ feet of the track and 10 turnouts was measured with a NMRA thingy.

Ah, thanks. I thought it was an NMRA doo dad. 

I am also planning to automate, although not to the level you appear to be. (I'm interesting in automating mainline running. It appears you want to automate switching as well.) I would love to exchange notes with you sometime if you're interested.

[JusticeCity]

Vince, give me a break... it was a challenge to remember that I had one of those things let alone remember its name. 


I intend to automate the switching as my "mainline" is only long enough for a GP40 + a 40' box to move from the upper level to the lower level.


I had not planned (yet) to added DCC controller decouplers mostly for structural issues. I have between 1" to 2" plus 1/2" OSB to go through to retro fit and decoupler and already have so much more to do. I think I need to add some 10+ two aspect signals into the mix which I have not really considered yet.


Post any questions to this thread so others can benefit from the shared knowledge.


The next posts will be interesting I hope.

[JusticeCity]

The biggest issue I had/have is remembering things (I guess this comes with old age or a life of stress) so i have to write everything down. As a matter of fact I have to write down that I have to write down things as I live of life that needs to have everything in its place and easily accessible. The act of documenting the layout helps clear the mind and uncover issues that I would never had seen until it was too late.


Documenting is even more important when it comes to using computers to automate the layout. Programs like JMRI (Vince did I get it right?) and TrainController demand everything have names and address otherwise they don't work! It is imperative that the computer information match the configuration for your layout. Some people use paper wiring diagrams, charts in binders, but I am not one of those people. I have spend much of my life designing and managing data centres and contractually a design and "as built" set of documents had to be produced. In the more modern world of automation systems this is called a Configuration Management DataBase (CMDB).


A CMDB is just an ordered collection of how things are connected together with historical and current timelines of the changes and design decisions. It can be as simple as a binder with paper documents, or a software package that goes out and auto discovers how things are connected together. (These are very neat tools in the data centre world, but there are not any in the model railroad world - yet). For my layout, I choose the Excel spreadsheet route as it was the easiest way of me to tweak stuff.


Here are some of my Guiding Principles for my CMDB


- that the labels on the cards, turnouts, wiring, etc will have the same name as it is in the automation program
- the naming between various automation programs be consistent whenever possible
- references to and name will be "linked" so a change would be reflected to others parts of the CMDB
- there will be a way to reflect what's under the baseboard to whats on the top of the baseboard


This sounds way too complicated, but by not creating a CMDB live would be much worst if issues and changes happen.


To put things into perspective here is a block diagram of the layout electrical system. This is the high level view and represents what is currently connected. I know there are more accessory decoders to add, but that will be documented when I design that part of the layout.





Here is an example of the CMDB record of the power ratings and consumption





The rest of my CMDB records are attached below.













Here is one for how the Circuitron SMails are configured. Setting here are often duplicated in the automation programs, so knowing what is setup here if very important as a "closed" turnout can have various meaning. More on this is a later post.





I hope this is useful to someone on how to create a CMDB for you layout. I will get into the lighting CMDB in the next post.

[JusticeCity]

These posts may seem a bit dry in the reading, but I cannot stress the importance of standards and documentation needed for automating a railroad. It might be easier to just connect it all up and magically it works for the first time. If that happens, power to you. However, computer automation can be very complex and sometimes a small little quirk can take days to understand and even longer to resolve. So document as you design and build, it will pay you back.


Ok, I will get off the soapbox and onto showing the CMDB for lighting.


One of my biggest issues with the lighting is how it should be done. There is lighting for structures which I documented in a number of Youtube videos,


https://youtu.be/Up7RpMhx4Eo?list=PL9wlL7wHNjWCFz5sTMYPFrsWQLIABDNwv


The conclusion from those videos is that we as modellers need to change the way we add lighting to our structures. The transition through flashlight builds, to "grain of wheat" bulbs connected to 12 Volt/AC/DC has long since been replaced by LEDs, resistors and/or current limiters. LEDs in 5 mm sizes were soon replaced by 3 mm and then to various SMD (Surface Mounted Diodes) sizes.


With LED we had to worry about what resistor value we needed to get the light intensity a particular structure scene we were trying to create. Getting the best effect was a hunt and peck strategy that was often too cumbersome to manage. Then there was the issue on where do you put the resistor, in the structure or outside of it. What is you wanted lights in different rooms? How many resistors do you need? Where do you hide them all? Then wouldn't it be great is you could simulate someone coming home turning on the porch light then the hall light then the kitchen? This is were the LED/resistor based world kills those dreams.


This is where the NCE Light-it comes to the rescue. It allows you to connect three LEDs each drawing 20 ma and program each with various lighting effects. The Light-It is attached to the DCC buss and is treated as a DCC accessory for the computer automation programs. I will not go into how to program the Light-It as it is well documented in the NCS manual.


Well, the NCE Light-It is not nirvana and has it's issues/limitations. Firstly, the on/off control of an LED string is not easily accessible. Like a normal DCC accessory you can turn all the LEDs on/off by "throwing/closing" the accessory, easily done with automation. To turn on/off an individual LED requires you to change a CV in the accessory, which is a manual process. I have not yet found a way to automate this process and is on the plate to investigate further.


Q: Ok, what about the NCE Illuminator?


A: It "just" a Light-It with mini plugs in it. Otherwise it is exactly functional to the Light-It.


Q: So what about the issue of multiple resistors and that wiring you were taking about?


A: Sign, sorry to say you will have to throw out the selection of resistors and current limiters; they are no longer needed. The Light-It has them onboard.


Q: But how do you control the light intensity?


A: You will just have to use your DCC controller to change a CV. BTW: once set it is retained until you change it again, even after power failures.


Q: Where do you put this Light-It card?


A: The light-It card is "very" small and in my experience it is best mounted in the base of the structure or behind a removable panel in the structure. Its power consumption is very low and heating is not an issue.


Q: How is the Light-It powered.


A: For automation the only way is to connect to the DCC buss. While, it works on a 12 VDC source, it has to be programmed with you pressing buttons and I do not recommend doing this as it is a pain to do. Stick with the DCC source.


Q: Do you have any other recommendations/comments about the NCE Light-It"


A: Yes... The NCE Illuminator, Light-It or the Woodland Scenics Just light it give you great options for layout automation, but are static. What I mean is once you have set it up, it gets repetitive and boring. There is not easy way to turn off multiple Light-Its with the push of a button or the flick of a switch (not at least from what i have found to date.)


There still some interesting automations things that could be done. For example, as a train drops of a boxcar at a loading dock, you could turn on the dock light and left be on for a set period of time or when the boxcar was removed. This would use the Light-It as a NRMA signal function. A flashing red light could be used as a warning light, etc. The imagination is the limitation here, not the products.


Heh, you were talking about the CMDB for lighting, where is it?


Yup, here it is and you will now understand why documenting the setting is important.





Enough lecturing and the dry stuff, the next posts will have some pretty pictures.

[vinceg]

Interesting stuff, Marty. I hadn't started thinking about lighting, yet, but you have reminded me that it's probably not too early to do so. I didn't know about the NCE lighting products - I will look at those in more detail. It is certainly a decent price point for three outputs. For my part, I have been assuming that I would use some Raspberry Pis or other single board computers to do the job. That would be partially for the flexibility but more because I don't want to be pulling amps off my DCC bus that aren't being used to run engines. Lots of study to do there, though. I haven't really looked into the current capacities of the various boards' I/O, e.g.

I am really enjoying your posts. I agree 600% about the documentation. Trying to go back "later" and change/expand/fix an electrical system without documentation is NO fun to do by tracing wires....especially when much of it is not easily accessible (under the layout, for example). Here's an example of a few pages from the ring binder I have been putting in place for my circuitry. Nowhere near the structure of what you have, but hopefully will keep me out of trouble. I have north end staging that represents Chicago on my layout. Occupancy blocks are set up as follows:



My staging blocks are all broken into three blocks. The middle block is the large block and will usually contain most of the train. The end blocks are each about three feet in length and allow the software to recognize that the train has reached the end of the block when coming from either direction.

I use a lot of Railroad CirKits products - really like them. They can operate on the Digital LocoNet bus but allow you to supply external power. The Watchman is their occupancy sensor product. Each board gets its own address (you can see them on my diagram -- note they can go above 9999) and can inductively sense down to 500 microamps via 100:1 current transformers enclosing a feeder lead. To track the mapping of individual wires to each block, I keep a terminal strip diagram as follows:



I keep screen captures of all of the JMRI pages needed to program the Watchman boards needed to set up the CVs to make all this happen. I won't post those - probably not interesting.

Once the information is in JMRI, I connect it to CATS (Computer Automated Traffic System -- http://cats4ctc.wikidot.com) to build what I hope will be the CTC dispatching station for my operating sessions. Yet to be determine how much automation can happen within the open source software and how much I will need to modify or add myself.

I have similar documentation for turnout control using the RR CirKits Motorman boards. This is one place where I really appreciate the ability to use external power (to control the Tortoise switch machines). I will shortly be getting some Signalman boards to manage signals once I have the mainline completely blocked, wired, and sensed. You brought up an interesting point - using signal controllers for general light control. I also hadn't considered that. Some more good ideas to ponder.

More later.

[JusticeCity]

Interesting, I will get into the NCE vs "X" in a later post.

[JusticeCity]

So you ask "... so what..."


This is why ...





and this maybe another reason ...





ok, this is not a reason for a CMDB, but a way to reduce the number of things I have to screw into the baseboard.





Q: Why the Circuitron Small?


A: Because I can.  No, it is because I did not want to have a 12 vdc buss, or a 5 vdc buss and I wanted to simplify the wiring.


However, I wavered on what type of control of turnouts I wanted. Initially I thought servo based was the cat's meow, but I quickly learned it is a screaming messy, pain in the neck with too much effort to get the working just perfectly. "Oh, it simulates the real turnout...", I thought I wanted that, but that is not really what it does. It is too slow in fast clock time and consumes power even if it is never used. Which forces you to turn off ALL power to the railway to stop doing that. (unless you have an on/off switch in the DCC buss feeds.


While the documentation for the Small is 6 sides in very small print, it references something called "auto-align" and points you to a application note # that does not exist on the companies web site. Of the 10 Smails I have had 3 are "flaky". I use that term loosely as there is an air of unreliability to the servo action. For example, I toggle a turnout to a thrown or closed position it moves over to that position then immediately returns to the position it started from. If I power everything off and re-boot the DCC controller a different Small will behave the same behaviour and the original one works perfectly.


Now, is it the Servo part of the Smail or the NCE Switch-it in the Smail or is it the NCE DCC controller? I really don't know and have yet to be able to replicate reliability to troubleshoot it. I suppose I could just use the 12 VDC to switch them, but that is so not helpful to what I am trying to do.


Do I believe my decision was right selecting the NCE ecosystem?


Yes, and no. Yes, because the supply of NCE components is greater in my area (Toronto, Ontario).


If I had infinite funds, I would rather of gone for the ESU ecosystem.  So what is done is done and I have to live with it until I win a Lottery. So until that has happened I needed to add manual toggles to activate the turnout. As temporary as it gets.

[JusticeCity]

Can you guess what this mess is for?