Model railroading

[Ray.R]

Wow..

That's impressive..!!! 

Where do you find the time for hobbies?

[Ben]

"

Where do you find the time for hobbies?

"

My wife and buddy don't know to stand still.

When I hang with my wife and shes workin her laptop, I play with LV and answer Q's.

When with my buddy, we're either inventing things or building models.

Someday I'll collect up the models and post images of them.

I have an F18 that was declared "perfect!".

Ben

[Ray.R]

My wife & I had decided (now a few years ago) to design & build our house.  That's our hobby... I haven't decided which smiley to put..  😉

We're {f-i-n-a-l-l-y} at the painting stage.  It has more CAT5 / CAT5E / CAT6 than most businesses.  It will be fully automated.  That will be my LV hobby.  That and RC-planes.  I liked one presentation during NI week about the autonomous RC planes doing a scavenger-hunt.  Apparently, something like that would be forbidden in the northern country where I reside..   😞 

But I've always been fascinated by model railroads.  I think a friend of mine at one time dedicated 1/2 his basement to tracks of all sorts. Nevertheless, your pictures are very impressive.  Glad you have time for your hobby.

RayR

[Ben]

I got the house thing out of the way before I learned about LV.

I have built many tissue and tooth pick planes for RC control.

I never flew any 'cause I was too cheap to buy the control.

It sonds like are almost ready to tansition to the model railroading stage.

Ben

[Ray.R]

---

@Ben wrote:

It sonds like are almost ready to tansition to the model railroading stage.

---

That might explain why I am reading this thread 😉 

😄

[Dennis_Knutson]

I spent the last weekend checking out several of the local hobby stores looking for something new to occupy my time. I've given up on trying to fly an RC helicopter. I've had to replace too many broken parts after crashes and haven't had a flight lst longer than about 30 seconds. I spent some time looking at the railroad stuff and though of this thread as I did. I wonder if my daughter would mind if I took over her room while she is away at college.

[Ben]

Hi Dennis,

If you limit the layout to something small you could use fold up legs so you can put it away.

Another option is to hang it from the ceiling and just crank it up when it gets in the way.

The Model Railroader Assoc has standards that will allow you to build sections that will inteface with others if you want to display it a convention.

Ours was built before the standards were defined it it is portable and is currently in its forth home.

If your near the hobby store again soon, you may want to grab the latest issue of Model Railroader.

It has an article about Rod Stewart model and is was spectacular!

It turns he just does the music thing to feed his train hobby.

Ben

[waldemar.hersacher]

I recently switch from real model railroading to virtual model railroading. For this product http://www.eep4u.com/shopenglish/index.htm I created a LabVIEW program to manage so called Splines. Splines are the ways the traffic is moving on. You can stretch and bend them. There are Splines for railroad, tram, streets, fences, rivers and even waterways and airways. Since Splines are identified by a simple number in the program you need some management. There are reserved numbers assigned to specific Splines so each one having the layout will see the same. But there is a range of numbers you can assign freely to Splines.

The program is written in LV 7.1.1 because it has the desired functionality and the smallest runtime engine. My users do not need to install the runtime at all. They just download the packages, unpack them and work with it.

Here, http://www.bahn.hersacher.de/eep-tools/spman_hauptfenster.htm, you can find some information about the program. It's all in german, because the main market is  german speaking.

[Ben]

Long time no post in this thread so....

Here is some code that demonstrates how to implement a track plan in a Picture control. It also demonstrates a technique to use rings to enhance the click option on the picture.

Top level VI is "RailRoad.vi" (LV 6.1 'cause I have not touched this code in years)

The code is not up to good LV standards.

Ben

[Ray.R]

Did you see this thread? http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&thread.id=326334