8 Way Switching Layout using Engine IDs

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  • #1108
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Hi Roger,

    Good to know about this and for the example.

    i´ll stuy this exatly.

    #1109
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Hi Roger,

    That’s great what you found out. That opens a lot of operation possibilites! Many thanks for sharing your experiences.

    Best regards,

    Willi

    #1110
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Hi Roger,

    You mean,set an id ist bit wise and not by value on it,if i understand you right. :) And you will use controlertracks not so often? I think so. 😉 💡 Your example let me to show it.

    #1111
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Hi Roger

    Thats a great idea. Things like these help us open great track Possibilities. The trains look like there on military parade. :D

    Thanks Dave

    #1112
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    The basic idea here is very nice…. i cleaned up the messy behaviour at the end stops :D and extended it with switches at the end so a train can move on and loop back towards the entrance. The idea you worked out would never work right incase you put waggons in front of or behind a loco. Still, it opens a lot of possibilities to have different trains running different tracks 😆 Thanks a lot!

    #1113
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Louis,

    If you combine this “kind of train” logic with “block controls” it could work with passenger or freight cars in front of or behind the engine. The spacing between the switches would have to be long enough to allow the whole train to fit between the switches. You’d have to plan for some maximum number of cars in front of and behind the engine(s). And you’d have to block the track segment where the switch control was until the preceeding train was no longer on a switch.

    Another option is to put the switches as close to each other as possible. Then have the controls set the switches all at once and use the blocking logic to be sure that one and only one train is in the neighborhood of the switches at a time.

    Trains with more than one engine also complicate things. My freight trains seem always to have more than one engine. I’ve had trains with 15 or so freight cars that one freight engine couldn’t budge. I’d back into the train to couple up, then forward to get things moving and nothing happened. 😯 I added another engine and it would move. For the large layout I posted earlier, I tagged all the extra engines as ID 3. The controls are set (mostly) to ignore ID 3. For most pratical layouts, I think you would have to reserve one bit as the “do nothing” case for engines that only pull and don’t control. That still leaves 4 cases. :)

    Can you post your improved layout? I’d like to see how you let the trains out the “back end” into another set of switches and avoided collisions bringing them all back together again. I don’t like to use time delays, but that’s what I did to reset the 8-way switch demo. I’d love to see how you did it.

    Roger

    #1114
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    AZRoger wrote:

    Louis,

    Can you post your improved layout? I’d like to see how you let the trains out the “back end” into another set of switches and avoided collisions bringing them all back together again. I don’t like to use time delays, but that’s what I did to reset the 8-way switch demo. I’d love to see how you did it.

    Roger

    Roger, I didn’t 8)

    The first train leaving, loops back into the entrance and THEN triggers the next one. What I’m working on now is an alternating sequence of freight and passenger trains, where the freight trains take a north loop and the passenger ones a south loop. The passenger trains go thru a station with 3 tracks where the diffent ID’s select them onto track-1 or 2 or 3, where they stop for about 1 minute and then continue. The hardest part now is to trigger 2 trains out, 1 immediately, the other 35 secs later so at the same time 2 trains are moving. Problems will arise sooner or later when 2 trains try to move back in at the same time. I think it’s been discussed earlier, I may need to figure out some controls at the entrance tracks to prevent two trains entering at the same time.

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