What a great year 2020 was!

"Carsten, you have lost your mind!"  This may be what some of you are thinking as you read the title of this blog entry.  But for the topic of this blog, namely my continued work on my 1-scale layout, 2020 was amazing, at least in terms of the progress I made.  Here's an image from about a year ago:

Yup, that's the lower staging yard (henceforth known as the Lower Schattenbahnhof, or LSB) as it looked in January 2020.  A year later I am done with the benchwork, have all the track laid, and that Schattenbahnhof is now buried three levels deep under other track!

Even though I haven't added entries into the blog since September, work has continued, with a flurry of activity in December.  First, I completed installation of almost all of the reed switches on the layout.  There are a total of 51 of them now installed on the main line, and I will likely install a few more on the freight yard sidings.  

There are four Digikeijs DR4088GND feedback modules connected via CAT6 cables to the Intellibox.  The 51 reed switches around the layout are part of 17 individual blocks, three sensors per block.  The blocks are arranged around the layout like this:

What you are seeing above is an image of the track diagram I created in TrainController software, which I am now using.  LSB is the lower Schattenbahnhof, USB is the upper Schattenbahnhof (staging yard / hidden station).  I know, the terminology is a mix of German and American English, but then so am I!  Note the trains situated in the staging yards and on the layout.  Pretty cool, eh?

Aside from the work with wiring up all those reed switches I have been buried in the manual of TrainController Silver, the package I have purchased.  An upgrade to Gold may be in my future, too.  But for now, Silver does everything I want it to do- assuming I figure it out!  The learning curve is steep, but there is a large online community that has been very helpful.  It has also been lots of fun watching the software follow trains around the layout!

Three trains are ready to depart the Lower Schattenbahnhof (LSB).  With TrainController I suspect I will have between 4 and 6 trains running at any given time, with three more on sidings in the two staging yards.  

Is that a new siding?  Yup, I decided to liven up the south end of the station with a short siding that will be used for loading lumber and other goods onto appropriate freight cars.

Okay, more coming soon as I continue to play around with the software and begin what is hopefully the track ballasting and scenery work!

Happy New Year, all!

- Carsten