Justice City Layout Build

[JusticeCity]

You guessed it and did you realize how bad it could be?


I liked the idea of having a simple small tablet that I could use as an elegant way of programming and playing with the trains. (I'm the type of guy that watches the train move back and forth a couple times and then walks away. I need eye candy to keep me interested.)


First a little background, I have built magical control panels using plastics, aluminum and wood and never liked them. A tablet is the way to go, but it must be easier then connecting 100 wires to switches and terminal blocks. I wanted to use as little space as possible for the control panel so I built a sliding drawer under the baseboard where I could slide the control panel out do something, then slide it out of the way as the trains did their thing.


I walked into Staples a year ago and I saw this 10" Acer tablet that ran Windows 10. It had a detachable keyboard a single Mini-USB connection with a MicroSD card reader. I thought I finally had a solution and put down the $300 minus the employee discount and was off to the races. Yes, it has limited memory and was not the fastest CPU on the block, but a railway does not need that. The selling point was it ran Windows because most of the other cheap tablets were Android. The train software I looked at the time did not run on Android.


I had previously tested JMRI and TrainController Gold to see which I like and would suit my needs. It could be either one, so I decided to spend some PayPal money and buy TrainController Bronze for $139 USD. It seemed to have all the features I needed for my small layout. After the purchase I got an e-mail stating I would be receiving a package in the mail in the next couple weeks. I just figure it was just going to be a registration key and was surprised that it was a large USB stick. I shook my head and figured it was just the "Non-Demo" version of the software. It was not! It is a security dongle that you MUST have plugged in order to run the TrainController software.


Here is the fun part...the tablet does not have the "normal" USB connector. So I needed a Mini-USB to a Normal USB adaptor to plug in the TrainController Security dongle. But how do I connect the NCE USB interface to control the layout?


Oh, pooh! I need to find a Mini-USB to normal USB Hub so I can connect the security dongle and the NCE DCC system to this Acer tablet. Yuk! I could not find one that was cheap, so I had to get a normal USB to Normal USB hub. Double Yuk!


You thought that was a pain, just wait.


To edit and create the layouts on the screen with just the tablet and my cold finger tips was impossible so I need to make sure I had a mouse connected to speed up the hand to pointer connection. There goes another USB port on the hub.


I wanted to be able to edit the TrainController/JMRI configurations on my main desktop so I need to move my files back and forth from the Acer table to the desktop. I asked Freiwald if I could put my files on their security dongle and he said it is NOT a recommended practice and could screw everything up. There goes another USB port on the hub.


So to connect the hub to the tablet there are a few choices,


A stubby adaptor that causes the tablet to lean to the left when the USB hub is connected. (Notice the power plug is needed to give enough power to the USB connect to power all the USB connections.





Or, my other choice,





At least there is no stress on the mini-usb connector, but looks like pooh.


So where are we today? It looks like this,





Its gawd awful and cumbersome when the tablet is sitting on it elegant iKea tablet stand.


This leaves me with a number of options,


- buy a tablet with more ports. Never going to happen with my budget
- use one of my 10 year old desktops. Very unlikely as there is no room for it, not pretty and makes too much noise
- mount the hub under the baseboard and have a longer USB cable connecting to the tablet. Best choice so far.


Sorry, for the long post but these are the things that de-motivate and frustrating in trying to create simple elegant solutions.


In the next post I will get a bit into the Freiwald TrainController Bronze. Not much detail, just enough to show why I chose it.

[JusticeCity]

TrainController, what can I say about it?

Its sort of like the sweet smell of a good hot chilli - your are drawn in by the heavenly aroma of the ground beef, onions, cumin, hot peppers and various other secret herbs and spices. As you bring a spoonful of that lovingly made chilli to your mouth the aromatic fumes fill your nasal passages and into your lungs. You cough slightly as the hot spices penetrate the lining of your throat and the anticipation is quickly satisfied as you take a full mouthful of promise. Your stomach aches for a taste of that homemade nirvana. As the first taste passes the uvula  you realize that may have been a mistake! What to do? The stomach is crying for it, but your taste buds have just experienced the second coming. Do you spit it out? Or pretend to choke and have someone give you the rap on the back? Or do you take it like a man and swallow it? You swallow!

The steaming chilli has left a trail of singed flesh down your throat. The stomach is beginning to question its life choices. Only one thing to do. Shout out gleefully that it "is a hot chilli and it tastes great". They man up and toast the chef for such an excellent chilli; then drink a gallon of your favourite fluid to numb the burning. In an hour or two your digestive system brings you back to reality and is telling you that it demands attention; which you quickly attend to.

Wait! The stomach is calling you. Initially, just as a rumble that turns into a full out scream as digestive juices seep up your throat. It needs something, what can it be? Oh yes, I forgot that soda and chilli do not like each other. Where was the cow? Then you remember your aunt acid, she always knew what to do. Yup! That does the trick.

I wonder if the chilli would re-heat tomorrow?

That sums up my review of TrainController Bronze.

[ACL1504]

Interesting, but way beyond my pea brain in setting it all up.

Tom

[NEMMRRC]

Marty,


I managed to buy a full-fledged Toshiba laptop for $125 on Black Friday....


Carry on.


Jaime

[JusticeCity]

Marty,


I managed to buy a full-fledged Toshiba laptop for $125 on Black Friday....


Carry on.


Jaime

Was it a touchscreen with detachable keyboard?

[JusticeCity]

So what does TrainController look like and what do I like and dislike about it?

Why so many questions? They are so tough to answer without someone saying JMRI does that or program xxx is better. All these are valid statements and have their individual merits but sometimes you have eat the extra hot chilli (Yah I spelt it right. Dang, I meant spelled it right.) My decision to but TrainController Bronze came down to the simply to use interface and did not depend on loading up my computer with tons of files and their dependancies. You have one executable to run and it runs fast without having panel z, panel y and panel k all up on the screen. If you know JMRI you will know what I mean.

Here are a series of screen captures of my small Acer tablet to help show why I chose the product,

First the opening splash screen,



The first thing to do was to setup the contacts (sensors),

Give it a name,




Setup a connection to the NCE USB interface/DCC cab. Notice how simple it is to enter the DCC accessary address to the NCE AUI; not like JMRI where you have to calculate the address by a magical formula.




Then setup the blocks,




Define the block properties (notice there are lots of setting here that I have not setup yet, such as places for the train to ramp up/down speed, signal lights, etc. Way too much to get into at this point in time.)




Then the turnouts can be configured. This is a very confusing part of what I had to go through. Needless to say I did the minimum to just get the turnouts to switch. Don't worry there is a simple drawing feature that will be connecting the contacts, blocks and turnouts together. I will leave that for some YouTuber to show you the fine details on how to do that. Just search for TrainController and you will see them.

I created the connection to the DCC cab.




I then gave it a name,




There is an "Inspector" window where the properties of the contact (Sensor), block, turnout and etc are displayed. A great feature to use because it shows in which routes it will effect. (BTW: all available routes are automatically calculated in the background and its just a matter of selecting the one you want. I will not be getting into that either.)




So how track diagram look like? I thought you would never ask. This shows how everything is tied together.




The menu bar at the top gives you all the options I can play with. The middle window is the drawing/editing and operating track plan. The bottom window are the engines and trains I have configured so far.

This is about as much detail as I dare to get into as the legume will get over-cooked and I will begin to start talking garbage.  There is so much more to implement and features I have not even begun to think about. This is the most basic setup to get block detection and turnouts working. Running engines and trains; not right now.

Ok, what do i like about TrainController Bronze,

- It was very easy to setup in its basic form. It took less than an hour to setup the 16 contacts, 16 blocks and 10 turnouts
- Drawing the track plan and making it pretty was about 2 hours
- The basic setup on an engine took less than 15 minutes including the custom thumbnails for my engines
- Easy install and interfaces is a standard windows style so learning curve was zero

So what don't I like about it,

- New nomenclature that I was not familiar with (i.e. contact vs sensor)
- This version does not have turnout feedback, i.e. sensor contact that the turnout is on the thrown or closed position. This feature is ONLY in the GOLD version that costs an unbearable cost of $649 USD. JMRI does have this, ok get that smile off your faces JMRI fan boys,
- I am not yet sure if I use the NCE Power Cab to throw or close a turnout (or the manual toggle) that the program knows about it. For example, if I use the toggle to throw turnout T100 would the program know it was thrown or just assume it is still closed and/or would it close it as part of running a train.
- The same goes to the use of the throttle. This is still under investigation.

Are confused yet? I am. There is still so much to learn and you never know I may convert to JMRI.

Comments?

[JusticeCity]

Well, I think I have cracked the unreliability of the electrical part of the layout. It has been a battle to have some predictably between the hardware and software.


Here is what I found out,


- I had a 12vdc bus for lighting structures that I powered with a supply that had the same size plug as the track power. At times I would confuse them and plug that one into the track power plug. (NCE Power Cab bus). It did not always connect and just did not have enough juice. So I eliminated the 12vdc bus jumpered it to the DCC bus and added a switch to control all the lights on the layout. Then I removed all 12 vdc ONLY structures from the bus and moved all the Nce Light-it connections to it. Now the track and lighting are on separate buses [size=78%]powered from one transformer supply.[/size]


- next I bought a NCE SB5 and UTP panel to replace the NCE Power Cab and power supply. Then everything started[/size][size=78%] to work as planned.[/size]


A post mortum turned up that the SB5 was running 1.65B firmware and the Power Cab was running 1.65. This improvement of the firmware version, added amps and faster SB5 command station accounted to getting it working.


TrainController Bronze now works reliably, however JMRI does connect, but still not there yet.  Somehow JMRI's configurations are just not right, I believe it is a known bug in 1.65B. I need to spend sometime looking at this.


I can now run trains from the computer and plan on getting routes and thing setup. There is so much to learn in TrainController and expect it will keep me busy until next year.


That's all for now.


(Sorry no pictures yet.)

[JusticeCity]

I've taking some time off from trying to get TrainController Bronze to behave as I think it should. The developer stated that NCE systems will no longer have any support for future versions and will not "fix" and bugs that are reported with NCE systems. I am now questioning my life choices.


So I decide to actually build a model for the next few weeks. The Goodman and Wolfe distillery's main build was built a while ago with the intention of adding the fermentation building next to it. That is why there is a gap in the background.





I wanted the fomentation building to be a continuation of the lower part of the main building as it is in the prototype. This means I could use the existing mould that I use to create the main building. I cast a few lower panels to have some extras to work with. When the Hydrocal was still wet I pressed some card stock to its back to stiffen it and to provide a over lap to the adjacent panel. A bit of epoxy and some strip wood helped keep the wall nice and straight.





From the back you can see how it looks. The left edge of the wall has the card stock cut back so I can but up the end wall (this will lead to the chimney.)





Hydrocal is a finicky plaster and sometimes a corner break off; no problem I will fix that later. In the prototype that are columns/buttresses to support the walls and the roof. I will file down a section of the wall between windows and add strips of the cast panels.





Adding the buttresses was a messy job, but with the help of a cut-off wheel in the Dremel and a shop vac the job when quickly. The buttresses were epoxied inlace and Hydrocal was used to fill in any gaps. A bit of file/blade work restored the block mortar lines.





This is roughly how it will look when completed.





This step was the easy part but very messy. Getting the side walls and roof framing is a bit more challenging. Then comes the hall to the chimney and colouring the building to match the main building. Lucky I kept the palette for from colouring the main building.





Until next time.

[PRR Modeler]

Very nice modeling.

[JusticeCity]

Curt, I appreciate the compliment.

[ACL1504]

Martin,

Looking forward to the finished building and how you will add the weathering.

the TrainControl Bronze system is very interesting.

Tom

[JusticeCity]

Tom, I think I will do a video on the process of colouring the new building. I hope I can get it the same as the main building.


Ok, back to the regular scheduled program,


I need to add the rock foundation to the building. I made a mould of a rock/block wall I got yard ago and cast a 1/4" thick copy with Hydrocal. I have tried to cut Hydrocal with all sorts of methods and tools from saws, No. 11 blades to files and snapping the piece off. I even have used "tile nippers" to get a rough cut and then file the edges flat. All of those methods are all very risky. The best method so far is using a cuts-off wheel on a Dremel or Jeweller's Flex-Shaft tool. I set up a vacuum cleaner to suck up all the dust and use a straight edge to score the cuts-off line with the thin cut-off line. Then slowly work down into the Hydrocal. It takes a bit of time and is still dusty, but it works very well.

As you know already I use Epoxy to stick Hydrocal to everything. It is a simple matter to make sure the mating edges are clean and flat and making sure the epoxy does not flow out to the visible surfaces. If it does wait until it dries and the cut it off, or alternatively use a IPA on a cotton swab and hip the epoxy up. (You may have to do a bit more clean up when the epoxy dries.)Here I have epoxied the foundation to the wall segment. (The wall next to the main building is just some mat board to provide some support for the roof later.



I did a similar thing on the exposed wall. Here you can see the seam left from the epoxy pressing out too much. (BTW: the side was is from one of the "broken" wall casting and is for the same level of the front wall. This way the blocks sorta line up.)



Ok, I'm not perfect! There are cracks in the seams and casting bubbles are in a number of places. I fix this with a "magical" trick. I use the dried Hydrocal bits and grind them up into a fine dust and mix it with too much water. This slurry does not cure extremely hard and is rather soft and flows/brushes very easily into cracks and almost dries instantly. It can't be used as a structural paster, but is great for getting into those places when "properly" Hydrocal cannot.



As you can see from the end wall the seam is virtually invisible and I have carved the stone to flow around the corner.



With the wall roughed out, I need to start considering the windows, roof supports and the roof slates and whether or not I will use the chimney.


See you next time.

[PRR Modeler]

Really nice job with the hydrocal.

[vinceg]

Yes, Marty -- very nicely blended around the corner.

[JusticeCity]

Curt, Vince, thanks for dropping by. I have this love/hate relationship with Hydrocal, it colours lovely, but creates such a mess with its fine dust that goes EVERYWHERE.


I managed to do a bit of work on the building roof and windows. I have tried many ways to build a roof, and found that this is the fastest and easiest way fro me.


First I start with some card stock cut to size and lined to the half with of the shingles.



Then give the bottom and sides a coat of brown and black spray paint.



Then I spray the back of the shingles with a flat black rattle can paint to make sure the edges are dark. Then The fronts are randomly sprayed with brown, black, khaki and grey spray can paint. I do twice as many shingles then I think I need.



I cut the shingle sheets into strips and mix them all together. This way I will pick random shingles when I glue them on. Yes, I glue them on and do not use the transfer tape from 3M or any other solvent dissolvable glue. From past experience I have found that if I decide to colour/chalk the shingles using any alcohol the shingles will stay put.



The roof card then turned out like below. I got lazy here and did not cut the strips into random lengths so there is a pattern still in the shingles. If you zoom into the picture you will see they look very real with bright and dark areas the glisten.



So here is what it looks like so far.



See you in the next one.