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Takadanobaba's detection lessons will be applied to the B&OCT

Train operations on the Takadanobaba will be automated.

Unlike the B&OCT, which will feature a hands on operator action, this is a display layout. My primary goal is to turn it on and watch the trains go back and forth. Hopefully, I'll have a decent scenic facade to make this realistic. (More on this in the future.)

Takadanobaba track diagram. The blue rectangle is an overhead pedestrian bridge connecting the two active stations on the layout.



Here's the concept: The scenic portion of the layout will have six through tracks -- grouped as three pairs of parallel commuter lines. These are the Yamanote Line, the Yamanote Freight Line and the Seibu-Shinjuku line. On the Yamanote and Seibu-Shinjuku Lines trains will stop at platforms in the scenic portion. After stopping at the station, the trains will exit off the layout onto a sector plate in staging. There, they will stop, the sector plate will shift to the other line, the train will reverse direction, head out of staging, stopping at the on-line station, as applicable and continue on to the staging area at the other end of the layout -- roughly 4.5 ft away. Rinse and repeat. 

A key given is: the trains must stop exactly at the right spot (either at the station or on the sector plate), slow and accelerate realistically. I've seen videos of similar Kato trains. They run well, but are fast. I need to work on the performance of the trains. 

How do I execute on this? 

I think with today's inexpensive and small computers, the process can be accomplished with: track detection, on-train DCC control, a Digitrax detection decoder, a Raspberry pi and JMRI warrants. If this paragraph makes it sound like I know what I'm doing, I don't. The pool is deep and I only dipped a toe in the water. I need to learn a lot more. This will be fun -- a non-tech nerd learning about tech!

After cogitating on this subject, I realized that my investment in learning will pay additional dividends: a similar set up will solve a big problem that I have struggled with on the B&OCT. 

This problem is that I have a need for a large volume of overhead trains to keep things interesting for dispatchers and tower operators. (Think of them as rolling scenery.) My space is limited. If I had an operator for each one of those trains, the layout room would become so congested that I'd have to go outside just to change my mind.

The solution appeared as I read about JMRI warrants and the writing discussed detection and signals. The B&OCT mainline will be fully detected and signaled. Those signals function as a part of the warrant instructions and I could automate a whole bunch of those scenery trains. They would automatically traverse the layout. 

One payoff is that they will give the tower operators a lot more work to do. The tower operators will have lineup sheets with simulated crossing traffic. That's kind of boring. Now, they'll have more actual mainline traffic. My work on Takadanobaba will be the test bed for the B&OCT. Mission accomplished x2. 

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