The New Track Plan

Garden Computer (distraction!)

On a side note, my garden computer is making progress - I now have it web enabled and measuring soil moisture in the front garden. It's been wet this weekend so the readings are going to be low for a while (meaning moist). Normally the raw data is scaled between 0 and 1023, 0 being a short circuit (wet) and 1023 being an open circuit (totally dry).

We are expecting more rain tomorrow so it shoudl drop down toward 0 again. Oh well, it needs to be monitored over a month or so, not just a few days.

Have a look at the charts on cosm.

Getting back into it!

Now that the weather is warming up again and daylight savings has started it's time to descend to the basement again and work on the model railroad.

I've been struggling with the logistics of the thing on a number of fronts:

• It's too hard to reach the tracks at the back corner of the system and I'm worried about losing stuff there;
• The foam base is fantastic but too hard to attach my servos to for point control;
• I can't easily work on the wiring and program the points without considerable logistical difficulty - it's all too far from teh computer and too hard to mount control systems to;
• I could not find a nice way to build the tram into the system and make the gradients work.

Well, a number of solutions came to me last week:

• I reworked the layout so all the rear tracks were much closer to the front and within easy reach. I also came up with a scheme for ensuring trains in tunnes are accessible from the side or below the layout;
  
• I noted that all the main points are concentrated in a central region of the layout so I've decided to build a timber framed removable central section with a slide out drawer to house the compute. This can then sit on my desk and be built up with tracks, point servos etc, all the points calibrated and a nice neat wiring job to boot;
  
• The new layout allows for a much longer tram track which can reach the heights I want and use standard peco curves. Much simpler and makes for smoother operation.