More Progress on Camford Junction

Following a short tuition session last week, the guys are now in full swing creating 500mm lengths of plain soldered track for the fiddle yards. Soldered track is more robust, and much cheaper, than EasiTrak although it does not look as good. It will be fine for the fiddle yard. The fiddle yard will gobble up over 70m of straight track, plus lots of curved track around the ends and 16 points. We may be some time.

Meanwhile, now the wiring on boards 1 and 2 is complete, I have powered them up and attached the laptop to the CBus with a plug-in CANUSB module. I used the Merg Flim Configuration Utility to update the firmware on all the CBus modules to the latest revision, and then started assigning separate event numbers for each point and each relay. Crossovers on the main line use a single event to operate both points. Main line track sections use pairs of the single pole relays to switch both rails between controllers, while the MPD area, which will only be associated with a single controller, uses a common return and just a single relay for each section. I documented the events, and the associated CBus module outputs in a spreadsheet as I progressed. Then I set up all the events in the turnout table in JMRI. Initially, JMRI only had two tables, 'Turnouts' for outputs and 'Sensors' for inputs. Over the years, extra tables have been added for 'Lights' and 'Signals', but there is not one for 'Relays' yet, so they will have to live in the 'Turnouts' table for now. Now I have all these captured in JMRI, I can proceed with setting up the layout schematic, with the turnouts, blocks and routes, and then work on route selection and setting the relays using 'buttons' on the layout screen.