Tehachapi, BC

[ednadolski]

ME says that their mold repair is in progress and getting ready for a run.  Hopefully we start to see some product over the next couple weeks, and there are no quality issues.

Even if it ends up taking longer, I'm glad that the product has not been discontinued.

Ed

[ednadolski]

The n scale supply chain can be maddening.

Understatement of the year!  Looking good, keep 'em coming!

Try Proto:48  (especially modern era) 

Ed

[GaryHinshaw]

Ed has been keeping me posted with ME updates offline, so I have been emboldened to move ahead with concrete tie track on the BE main in the Vortex.  I'm currently building the turnouts I need for that stretch, so that will slow things down a little bit.

WOW ,.. it makes my head hurt just tracing this vortex

I know...    When it's all in place though, I think it actually will be simple for guest operators to navigate.  The complicated parts are all staging and will be navigated by the home-road crew.  Guests running mainline trains will have it easy: on both decks a SB train enters from the left and exits from the right making one turn in the process, and that turn will be easily visible to the crew.  This arrangement was prompted by my small space (hence a multi-deck plan) and by my desire for a deep upper deck for the signature scene, which provided a natural home for a storage helix underneath.  All in all, I'm happy with how its turning out.

[Scottl]

Thanks Ed, that is great news.  I'm also glad this means tracklaying on TBC continues without delay!

[GaryHinshaw]

Some minor track-laying progress to report: another turnout has been fabricated and is ready for installation. (Weekend progress was slowed somewhat by an exciting World Series for this Bay Area native.  Truly amazing to watch the Giants manufacture runs without hits.  And then there's MadBum.)  This gives me an excuse to post an obscure angle of the guts of TBC:



This is a view from the terminal manager's pit looking across the back wall (garage door) towards the storage yard.  The track at bottom is coming out of Bakersfield; the segment A-A' is the mainline to Edison, taking one loop around the race track to gain elevation; the segment B is the direct connection between Bakersfield (north staging) and the storage yard; and the segment C-C'-C'' is the other connection between the storage yard and the south staging helix (above C'').

There will be a few crossovers above C'' in the south staging helix to help keep the sequential staging area somewhat fluid (so NB trains in the queue can runaround other trains to jump in line, if desired.)  I have tried to keep all of these staging functions close to this pit so they can be easily managed by 1 person.  I hope that turns out to be the case in practice.

[GaryHinshaw]

It's been a while... Not really an update yet, but a question (progress photos to come soon though!).

I'm at the point in track-laying now where I need to lay the reversing section at the bottom of the south staging helix and I could use some more advice on electrical component selection.  The reversing section needs to be longer than the longest train, and this means that it will span yard tracks as shown in this schematic:



Here the black tracks are fixed polarity, the blue track is under the control of a reverser, and the red tracks switch between fixed and reversible control depending on which route is aligned.  (In the diagram, the straight route is aligned, and hence under reverser control, but it could be any one of the three.)  The reason not to make all three yard tracks blue is to avoid operational restrictions: this scheme allows trains to enter/leave the red yard tracks on the left without concern for whether or not a train is on a reverser boundary.

So I need a scheme to switch the yard track feeders between the fixed bus and the reverser bus, depending on route alignment. I can see how to set this up with DPDT relays controlled by the contacts from the two Tortoises that control the turnouts, but I am a neophyte at selecting the actual components.  Does anyone have a recommendation for a particular brand that will not break the bank?  These would probably be controlled with a 12 V signal sent to the Tortoise contact, and they would switch between two standard 12V DCC busses, which could carry up to 4 A of current (the circuit breaker limit.)  A quick search of the Allied electronics catalogue shows components that cost $100-300!  I must not be looking in the right place...

Thanks in advance.

[C855B]

You must be looking at DIN-rail mountable relays. These are industrial components for integrating major production electromechanicals. What you need are called "general purpose" relays.

Here's something more like what you're after: http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/TE-Connectivity-PB/KHAU-11D12-12/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMtSzCF3XBhmW42ASEdwSsocMwSOCgHaN0k%3d

Nice to see updates in your thread again, Gary.

[tappertrainman]

Nice to see updates in your thread again, Gary.

Uh, YEAH!   

James

[GaryHinshaw]

Thanks for the encouragement guys.  Progress is being made, but mostly on under-the-hood infrastructure, so nothing very photo worthy.  To illustrate my point, here is a shot from a few months ago when the Vortex was just getting started, and I had things cleaned up a bit:



And here is a shot of the cubby on the right from a month ago, during an intensive Tortoise and DS64 wiring campaign under the staging yard throat:



  (BTW, I can't wait for my order of circuit breakers and auto-reversers to show up so I can finally install the power electronics in a neat and logical way.)

Mark Dance came by today to check out the progress (such as it is...) and he was quite bamboozled by the track routes in the Vortex (and he's a smart guy!), so I decided to design a new schematic to illustrate the plan better, and to show what parts of the track work are done, and which sections are still to come.  Without further ado:



The black track is in and done (except for some ballasting), the orange track (helix) is actively under construction and should be done in a month or so, and the blue track (lower deck) is probably still 9-12 months out.  The lowest level staging is shown on the left, the lower mainline deck is on the bottom right, and the upper mainline deck is on the upper right; they are connected by a 1-turn helix.  (Not shown is the temporary shoo-fly that makes a closed loop on the upper deck.  That is soon to be removed.)

One of the tricky aspects of the Vortex is that the south staging helix shares one loop with the Bakersfield-Edison mainline.  This mainline stretch will be visible to operators (the rest of the helix will be quasi-visible though something like smoked plexi), so I have been spending a lot of time finishing it (ballasting, weathering, etc.) before it becomes hard to access when the Vortex rises above it.  The sad fact is that it takes me ~3 hours per foot of track to paint the clips, run 2 passes of ballast, and weather it.  This stretch of mainline is about 18' of double track, so this task alone consumes ~100 hours!  I don't mind the work, but I do want to make progress on the rest of the Vortex so I can join the upper deck to the staging deck and re-commence operations.

The plan for 2015 ops is to simply run point-to-point from temporary north staging to the staging helix.  I expect to make progress on block detection and virtual signalling once the orange track work is done, so that will hopefully add some interest to this interim scheme.

Thanks for looking and more photos soon,
Gary

P.S. Thanks for the relay info Mike!  Very helpful.

[Scottl]

And here I was assuming that the weather has been so good out there this past winter that you were always out doing other things...

It sounds and looks like real progress.  What will be the operating strategy to keep track of the eight trains in the vortex?

[daedal_arcanum]

Gary,

This layout looks phenomenal.  As a fan of modern equipment and long trains, I'm really enjoying this thread.  Your craftsmanship and attention to detail are fantastic.  Thanks for sharing your progress.

If it is not too late (i.e. stuffs already wired up and in place), permit me to propose a solution for the reversing-section question.  Others have posted parts of this solution, so I thank you for the inspiration.

Let me go through my thought process here: simplify, simplify.

Based on the schematics posted, I think that Gary's layout can be simplified to a point-to-point layout with a loop on each end and a wye near one end:


(Someone please correct me if when I'm wrong about anything here...)

So the way I see it in that diagram, reversing sections are needed in the loops and where the wye meets, shown in orange below:


Someone mentioned using power-routing turnouts (or outputs from the tortoises) and using them to only power the routed track in the staging yards.  This is a great idea; my dad does this on his layout and it works great. As noted, it reduces current draw and keeps decoders from idling on unused tracks.  It could even be done on the Bakersfield loop staging yard on both ends of the double-ended tracks.  Each track would be powered with the correct polarity when the ladder turnouts were lined to that track.  Reversing would only be needed when the turnouts on both ends of the yard were lined to the same yard track.  So, I think wiring the autoreverser in-line with the bus prior to the first turnout in each yard ladder will turn the entire yard into an as-needed autoreversing section.  A complete passenger train will fit, no problem.  Also, trains could enter and leave the yard simultaneously as the tortoises would route correct-polarity power to the inbound and outbound tracks.

The same approach could be used in the storage yard.  The autoreversing section needs to start at the turnout where the track from Bakersfield staging and the track from the Mojave helix come together (the orange Y at the top of the storage yard above).  Route track power through the turnouts or tortoises and train length becomes a non-issue.

What about the rest of the layout?  Sokramiketes mentioned turning the whole thing into an autoreversing section.  As Gary noted, the whole layout doesn't need to autoreverse though... just enough to fit the passenger train in question.  Two different approaches would work here I think.  1: turn a train-length section of single track into an autoreverse section.  Simple enough I think.  2: Turn both tracks of the shortest passing siding (Walong, I think) into the autoreverse section; again routing power to those tracks through the autoreverser and then the tortoises (I know those are handlaid and not intended to be power-routing).  Like the Bakersfield loops, each siding would have the correct polarity when routed from the main and the auroreverser would handle it when both ends are routed to the same siding.  The reason I'd consider approach 2 is because it seems less likely that there would be two different trains entering & leaving the same track of a siding at the same time whereas this might be possible, if only slightly more likely on a section of single track.

Maybe this isn't a perfect solution, and I don't claim to be an expert, but I think this will address all (?) the issues raised in the last couple of pages.

<snip>
At the time, it raised a question that I never found the answer to: what happens when you have two adjoining independent reversing sections?  If they start off with the opposite polarity, why don't the two reversers duke it out in an infinite loop of simultaneous polarity switching?  This may be an unlikely scenario, but not a forbidden one, as far as I can tell.   


<snip>

In doing a little research for this reply, I read the manual for the DCC Specialties PSX-AR, which includes a "Double Reverse Mode" for just such a situation.  It seems they do in fact "duke it out"; the "double-reverse mode" turns one unit into a slave and introduces a delay for properly-sequenced autorevesing.

Thanks again for sharing this great layout. 

--bdb--

[jagged ben]

(Someone please correct me if when I'm wrong about anything here...)

Okay, that'll be me.     
I think you got the schematic wrong.  Hopefully I got it right below (note I flipped the upper and lower deck, etc.).     

The problem is that there is no route directly from Mojave staging without going through the legs of the wye.   Trains will travel from A to B, and that is too short for a reversing section to end at those points.   Hence the purpose of extending the reversing section significantly into the Mojave staging.  Hopefully this schematic also makes it clear why only two (not three) reversing sections are necessary.

[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

You do still have a very valid point here, though, if I haven't garbled my own thinking.   The reversing section does not have to be in Mojave Staging.  It could be anywhere in the wide loop from Mojave to Edison.   And doing it on a piece of single track, or at Walong where there are two tracks, could be simpler than doing it in Mojave, where there are three.  It was actually eric who suggested this area a couple of pages ago and we all sort of overlooked it because that section was so 'highly schematic' in the diagram being looked at.   

You still have the issue of train length and trains following each other,  but this can be discussed.  As I believe I said somewhere in this thread, it comes down to how Gary wants to operate the layout.  Ideally the reversing section is in a spot where, for operational reasons, two trains should not be traveling through both ends at the same time.  I believe the Mojave area is still a good candidate for that, but there may be other places in the wide loop of the upper and lower decks.  One advantage for Gary is that he can put off making a final decision until that loop is completed.   

[daedal_arcanum]

jagged ben, you may be right.  I think, though, that this picture shows otherwise:

This is a view from the terminal manager's pit looking across the back wall (garage door) towards the storage yard.  The track at bottom is coming out of Bakersfield; the segment A-A' is the mainline to Edison, taking one loop around the race track to gain elevation; the segment B is the direct connection between Bakersfield (north staging) and the storage yard; and the segment C-C'-C'' is the other connection between the storage yard and the south staging helix (above C'').

I think in this picture, segment B is one leg of the wye coming off the main trunk and segment C is the other leg coming off the main trunk in the other direction. 

In looking at the manual for the PSX-AR last night, I think it may also be acceptable (or even preferrable) to use one leg of the wye as the reversing section.  Is the C leg long enough to hold a whole train?  This wouldn't require running the autoreverser through the turnouts either.

Regards,
--Brandon--

[jagged ben]

jagged ben, you may be right.  I think, though, that this picture shows otherwise:I think in this picture, segment B is one leg of the wye coming off the main trunk and segment C is the other leg coming off the main trunk in the other direction. 
Regards,
--Brandon--

The crucial point is that the route from the upper deck splits to the storage yard before it rejoins the "main trunk."   This happens at C" in the picture, and the two connections are literally the two turnouts of a crossover.   

With that said, I did get a part of Gary's Vortex wrong.   Here's a newly corrected version:
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

It's true he could do what you are suggesting with three reversing sections.   Doing it in Mojave reduces it to two.  Either way he may have some relay installation to do to have his reversing section be longer than the longest train and not require a special operating rule.

[GaryHinshaw]

First off, welcome to Railwire Brandon -- and thank you for a thought-provoking first post!

Regarding the schematic, I think jb's last post captures a key point, namely the existence of the crossover at B in his diagram.  After staring at my last schematic for a while, I decided to re-orient the staging deck to better reflect the connections between the yards and clarify the possible reversing sections.  Without further ado, here is my latest version:



and a blow-up of the wye section it contains:



In this version, the letters A,B,C, etc. correspond to the letters in the photo above that Brandon recalled: A-A' is the Bakersfield to Edison main line, B is the connector from Bakersfield to the storage yard, and C-C''' is the connector from Mojave to the storage yard.  The red +'s indicates the normal polarity of the track.   The section from C-C''' is the area to focus on; it is shown as dashed because it doesn't actually cross the A-A' main line, rather the A-A' section loops once in the Vortex, but that would be too confusing to show in a schematic.  The topology shown here is correct.

Note that the crossover at C'' has two reversing effects: 1) it forms a wye, B-C-C'', and 2) it makes the full main line a reversing section if the crossover is taken.  The reason I have the crossover is two-fold: 1) to facilitate continuous running via the Bakersfield balloon, and 2) to allow direct transfer jobs between Bakersfield and Mojave.  Given this duality, a reversing section from C''-C''' is the simplest because it can serve both as the tail of the wye, and as the main line reversing section.  It would be really simple if the single track portion of C''-C''' were long enough to hold a complete train, but alas it is not, hence I must include a portion of the 3-track section of the Mojave staging helix.  This introduces a complication: if a train is crossing one end of the reverser at C'', I have to be careful to avoid having trains simultaneously crossing at C''' if all 3 tracks are under the reverser.  The current plan is to use relays to route only the lined track through the reverser, so trains in the other two tracks can cross C''' without restriction.  This is a tricky bit of wiring though, and I haven't fully come to grips with it yet...

An alternative which might be preferable is two reversing sections: one in leg C-C'' of the wye (which is longer than the longest train) and one in the single track section between Woodford and Walong, which is 16' long (just barely longer than the longest train).  Given the complications of the C''-C''' relay solution, this may be the simplest way to go.  Comments welcome.