topic Re: Model railroading in BreakPoint

Model railroading

waldemar.hersacher — Tue, 05 Apr 2005 21:09:32 GMT

I know from the LV codig challenge there are some railroaders here since someone wants to model the solar system in G scale.

I'm a model railroading fan and was running some Märklin models. Today I have the place to build a new one but my children and LV are keeping me off from working on it. My youngest son starts playing drums so he got an aerea in the room where I wanted to start with the new layout.

My focus is on German railroads but for building and operating I'm also inspired by the faboulos book of John Allan.

Nowadays I try to build the model railroad I planned with a computer program. It is not only a planning program you can also operate the trains. I hope it will give an impression for me how it should look when I build it.

Re: Model railroading

spaceman_spif — Tue, 05 Apr 2005 21:44:20 GMT

My oldest son enjoys model railroads, but unfortunately I have younger ones that are at the age where they would tear up any set I would try to build. But someday when they're all old enough, I'd love to build a neat little set. I don't know what "time period" I would build. 1850's? 1930's? 1950's? Modern? They all have some neat looking engines. I'd probably go with a small scale. Something O, S, HO or even N. Right now all I have is a Thomas the Tank Engine G scale set for my oldest one. And I need to fix that one already.

Re: Model railroading

Ben — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 01:31:35 GMT

Trains run in my family!

Lets see how many image I can get to attach.

Ben

Message Edited by Ben on 04-05-2005 08:37 PM

Re: Model railroading

Ben — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 02:03:33 GMT

My buddy and I model in N-scale. The immages I posted of my layout in various phases of development.

The whole thing is controlled by a LV application that interfaces with a Bruce Chubb inspired control system. Its old and bulky but we both can "chip it" with costing an arm and a leg to keep it going.

We have block occupancy detectors to track engine progress through the layout.

The crossong gates are operational.

In part of the layout we are attempting to model the hillside mine across from my house as it appeared durring the post war era to 1950 (sorta). The other wing of the layout models one of blasts furnaces that were feed by the coal coming form the mine.

My brothers and dad also do modle railroads. My dad and one brother work in G-scale and have a fantasy garden railroad complete with streams waterfalls bidges, tunnels and fish. I'll see if I can find the url to my brothers site.

I will also post a screen shot of the LV app to show the current version of the application. It seems I do not have a copy of the pp on this machine.

The application is going to be re-written soon to either model the layout using a 3-d graph or the new LV 3-d picture control. I have not decided yet. Also planned for the next version of the software will multiple cabs incuding a computer controlled cab. I think I can manage about 7-12 trains in various statges of travel once the collision avoidance logic is in place.

We still have "tod-do" list that read like "Build digital output board and cable for blocks 13-24" but we have come along way. You can actually control the layout without seeing it.

Oh yes, in a latter posting watch for "train cam" to see the layout from a flat car as it traverses the rails.

I am glad you brought this topic up!

Ben

Re: Model railroading

chilly_charly — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 02:29:56 GMT

HO that thread has some good chances to become Ben's favourite !
I'm sure Waldemar knew about Ben's addiction and that he has some nasty plan of his own to trap poor Ben.

CC

Re: Model railroading

chilly_charly — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 02:39:54 GMT

Apart my previous stupidities, I have to say that Ben's set up is really beautifull and impressive. That's something I have been often dreaming of when I was young, and even later when I discovered LV ! No kidding here !

CC

Re: Model railroading

waldemar.hersacher — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 06:10:13 GMT

Hi CC,

yes I have seen it at the coding challenge. I thought it was Ben but I was not sure and made not much effort to find his reply there. And it was at a time I was busy so I would not start a thread in there.

Re: Model railroading

Ben — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 12:11:52 GMT

Here is a wide angle shot where the LV app is visable.

more stuff to come latter.

Ben

Re: Model railroading

Ben — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 13:15:01 GMT

And one more of the track plan in LV picture control.

Ben

Re: Model railroading

RayFarmer — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 13:51:44 GMT

Ben,

whats the yellow w for in the top right hand corner.

Is that like the π symbol in that Sandra Bullock movie? Click on it and you start controlling real trains!!!!

Ray.

Re: Model railroading

Ben — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 13:56:24 GMT

Coding artifact.

Genearation 3 will offer cab time (via a credit card) to allow you to control that layout using the LV web-interface.

Ben

Re: Model railroading

Ben — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 19:12:14 GMT

In my excitement I neglected to thank...

CC for the kind words. Thank you.

Walderman for starting this thread. Thank you.

Ben

Re: Model railroading

waldemar.hersacher — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 19:44:49 GMT

As I said I haven't a real physical layout.

I included two graphics. The GIF shows the visible part of the layout. The ending track at the right side will go to underground. There I will have space to store 3 passenger trains and 9 freight trains. In the upper part is the aera where the freight cars are loaded and unloaded. In the lower part is the station. This plan is done with a low price model railroad planning software. Its not very comfotable and the calculation is not very exact. But it gave me an idea what can be build in a given space. The skill will be to build the freight trains according to a shedule table for each car and the time of the departure of the train.

The JPEG shows the station together with a passenger train bringing the pupils to school and the morning freight train. In a short time the passenger train will depart for collecting more pupils and the freight train will deliver its cars and pick up the old ones. The work was done with a railroad game (no it's not MS Train Simulator)and I have gone as far to lay the track from the underground station to the passenger station. In the right background you can see the inner curve which will lead to the goods station. The blue background is where the walls of the room will be.

From the frame rate you can see my computer is not fast, especially the graphics card will not support DirectX 8 in HW. But it's fast enough to program with LV.

I also have started a LV app. which will help me in keeping track which freight car is to pick up with the next loco and where each freight car should be located. I have made some design of the database and some of the functions entering the data for the freight cars. I don't have planned to make this a general railroad cars switching game, it's just for my layout.

Message Edited by waldemar.hersacher on 04-06-2005 09:45 PM

Re: Model railroading

Ben — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 12:05:12 GMT

Hi Waldemar,

Very nice images. I showed your pictures to my "partner in crime" and he was convinced you are using the same software he is using to try to document our layout.

You are doing a better job than we did in planning. In fact I do not remeber doing any planning, hmmm....

This ahs lead to us having to re-work some stuff. One of the biggest problems we ran into was that we did not have a large enough tuning radius to be able to turn around 4-8-8-4's and the like. We ended up having to build a large scale compass to re-shape one of our curves.

It looks like you are planning on using fixed track sections and that should help.

I can offer some general advice on the track work. Do some research ahead of time to decide what kind of rail suites your taste and then pruchase everything you will need plus all at one time. Since we went into this as novices, we just picked up some stuff here and there as we went. Since the model rail stuff comes and goes from the market, we have rails and turnouts from a half dozen manufactures.

I would like to also sing the prasies of the "tortise" switch machines. They are worth the cost. We have also experimented with ganging multiple turnouts together and using a single tortise to actuate the set. I dod not plan on doing that again! Next time mutliple tortises in parallel.

Do you know if the software you are using for the "two trains at station" image has an activeX interface?

That could be the solution I am looking for to simplify the next generation of graphics.

The scheduling you mentioned is still a pipe dream for us.

I am concidering "opening up" my code to help drive the model railroading world. I have been developing it such that it is configuration driven and therefor can be used on more than one layout. Its crude but it works.

I anyone is interested in doing an shared project for model railroads, post here and we can talk more.

Ben

Re: Model railroading

Ben — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 18:20:22 GMT

Here is a link to my brother's web-site

http://members.fortunecity.com/sewtrain/index.html

It is not the fanciest web-site you ever saw but it does show what he and my father put together. Besides, it has pictures of trains!

Ben

Re: Model railroading

Enrique — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 18:48:03 GMT

Awesome pictures!

Enrique

PD: Man! What is with that huge American Express ad?!? At the beginning I thought is was a pop-up window. Having a "free" site is becoming more and more expensive.

Re: Model railroading

Ben — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 19:05:23 GMT

Thank you Enrique,

Sorry about the advertising.

Ben

Re: Model railroading

Enrique — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 20:43:23 GMT

Oh! Nothing to be sorry about. Although I do understand the free space may have the condition of advertisement, I think that way is abusive. Just my opinion. If you allow me, I'll encourage you to look for another host.

It is certainly an honor (and an advertisement opportunity) to be next to those fine train images 😉

Re: Model railroading

unclebump — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 11:41:58 GMT

Count me in. If I ever finish beta testing the 3rdPlanit model railroad cad software, I'll finish designing my layout. I've built the module frames and have the plywood on top. I use HO scale. I just can't decide on single or double level. Here is some of the stuff that I've drawn in 3rdplanit. This program uses openGL. Look for items by Dan Armstrong.

http://3pi.info/superark/index.php?action=view&view=category&catid=11&catflag=21&sublevel=

Here is a link to the home page for the software. Version 8 may be released this month.

http://www.trackplanning.com/

Re: Model railroading

waldemar.hersacher — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 22:44:21 GMT

Hi to all and especially to Ben,

for the track plan I used a cheap software named Modellplan-Planer Version 1 from Sybex-Verlag GmbH from 1999.

For the 3D-model I use a software named eisenbahn.exe professionell Version 2.43 from Software Untergrund. I got this as a gift from my brother-in-law this Easter. Interestingly is how they store the data. The track layout and all the scenery is in a XML-File. The ground color, the level information and texture information are in bitmap files. The ground color bitmap is used to paint the ground. The level information bitmap is used to generate the hight of the landscape. The green and red channel is used to build a 16 bit word with the green channel as high significant byte. The resulting word is the hight in cm with a offset of 100 m. You can build a scenery with a level from -100 m to 100 m. The texture information bitmap uses the blue channel to code a index. This index is found in another file which maps it to the real filename of the bitmap. The models are independent from the layout and are stored with the program.
You cannot lay the tracks correctly with the mouse and building curves with the same radius is very hard. But you can edit the XML-File and with some help of a calculator you can build a good layout. The now available Version 3 has dialogs where you can enter the parameters of each piece of track. Also there are some tools available to help generating the landscape and the track laying.

For all who are willing to build their own models the sell a construction progam. There is a community of people who are building and selling models like unclebump pointed to for another program.

I restarted the layout. The first one has only the aim to get familiarized with the program. The room I can use have the size of 3.13 x 2.65 m. I created a new model scaled up from H0. Unfortunatly I have to stretch the aerea by a factor of 2.5 since the program wants to have a least a size of 500 m. In this layout I started first to create the landscape to get familiarized with this part of the program. As a result I builded the greek aerea which is located between the passenger station and the freight station.

The layout is a U type one and the screen shot I took is from the middle where the operators and visitors will stand, it's the bottom of the U. The landscape has only the main plateaus. The aerea is falling down vertically between them and I will start making normal gardes.