Latest at Smith Summit

Tonight I finished the last of the scenery work around the 12 whopping feet of mainline that I have ballasted. That's 12 out of close to 300 feet of mainline, including the K&N branch, and I hate to think how many feet of sidings and yard tracks have to be done.  This will be a lifelong project.

There are certain to be scenery enhancements as I go, but for now I'm pleased with the more-than-basic scenery I have in this area. 

The photos above depict the mainline around Smith Summit, where the CR&E tops out in both directions, climbing eastbound from Lewisburg, WV and westbound from New Castle, VA.  

Latest scenery and signaling progress

It has been awhile since I've posted an update, but here goes.  I've been busy installing the signaling between Coleman and Johns Creek, basically bringing one more siding and some intermediate signals under control of the dispatcher from the CATS CTC program.

Before doing that portion of the signaling project, I did some scenery in the Loops section, particularly at Ridge and west of Paint Bank, VA.  None of that scenery is complete yet, but I consider everything a work-in-progress. 

Additional scenery work has been done in the last week around the summit of the climb over the Alleghenies, at a place called Smith Summit.  

I also spent about a week's worth of evenings painting hillsides on the backdrop using several variations of green and gray paints.

Here are a few quick pictures.

Signal Maintainer Foster to the rescue

On July 15, 2012, Quintin Foster arrived all the way from Utah to help CR&E signal engineers with the CTC project.

After considerable effort getting the LocoBuffer to work with Windows 7, we were finally able to tie my laptop to the railroad, which was the first step in getting remote control of the signals.

With Quintin's help, we quickly got CATS and Designer up and running.  For those who don't know about CATS, go check out the JMRI page and read about it.  Rodney Black, the author of CATS, has developed a modern-era dispatching program for use with model railroads.  I've used it for years as a "magnet board" and I've used it as a CTC interface on other layouts, but now it's beginning to function as the CR&E's CTC system as well.  Once everything is initially set up, it's a piece of cake to do additional control points.

So far, the signals located at Lewis, Caldwell, Glace, Cove Mountain, Anderson, Ridge, and Coleman are all active and can be controlled using CATS.  The detection works through this area as well, so a train moving across the railroad shows up in the appropriate blocks on the CATS display.  Setting a route will display the appropriate signal, and passing that signal with an engine or detected cars will result in the signal "dropping" as it should. 

I do not have the passing siding turnouts wired into the system yet, so as of right now turnouts still have to be thrown using the fascia-mounted controls.  That will change soon, but until it does we have what is referred to as "poor man's CTC."  Crews will see a red-over-yellow signal at passing siding locations, which for now will tell them to line the switch into the siding.  Once the turnouts are wired to the Digitrax SE8C and configured in CATS, this will all become the responsbility of the dispatcher.

I'm excited to have this much going and I've very thankful to Quintin for his help today.  I learned a lot and feel like I can now continue to make progress on my own.  Like anything else, getting over the learning curve (or sometimes just getting started) is the most difficult part.

Signaling update 6/20/12

Signal installation is going better than I ever expected, although I have had the disappointment of a few LED's that will not light up.  I've been given the advice to check them to be sure they aren't shorting before sending the signal heads back to the manufacturer for replacement.
As of this writing, seven control points have had their signals installed and lit up.  These include:

Lewis - eastbound signal bridge, westbound two-headed mast signal
Caldwell - two single-headed mast signals
Glace - eastbound two-headed mast signal, westbound signal bridge
Cove Mountain - eastbound signal bridge, westbound two-headed mast signal
Anderson - two single-headed mast signals
Ridge - eastbound two-headed mast signal, westbound signal bridge
Coleman - eastbound signal bridge, westbound two-headed mast signal

This loads up all but one position on the first SE8C.  The first position has been left unused until I get cabling long enough to reach the signals at KD Tower (west end of Lewisburg.)

The eastbound main track signal at Lewis has a green LED that will not light.  The westbound main track signal at Glace has a red LED signal that will not light.  Of course both of these are built into the scratchbuilt signal bridges.  I'm hoping to be able to simply replace the heads if I can't get the LED's to light, but I suspect I will have to build new bridges.   Lesson learned - test LED's before installing in the signal bridges.

Turnout control is my next project, and then messing around in JMRI to get the control moved to the computer and detection working with the signals.