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.