Op Session Today on the D&J Railroad


D&J RailRoad

D&J RailRoad

Professor of HO
I put out the invite a little over a month ago. Several responded positively to it. These op sessions really give me a solid reason to clean up the basement and get the little projects completed. This goes for the bridge project too. No, I didn't get the bridge installed, but I did get it mostly painted. Just a few spots were I missed because of glaring sunlight.
Setting up the spotted cars in the industries and filling out the way bills in the trains. A few puzzles to work around and a couple gotch yas in there too, i.e. freight cars in industries without a way bill printed yet.
I usually set up the trains for about 30 cars. Only about 5 or 6 will be delivered to the industries out of each train. Keeping in mind that model railroading is a compression of the real world. The remaining 20 some cars in the trains are presumed to have been picked up or will be switched out.
The theme for this op session is: Foreign Power. Operators will have to bring their own road power, steam or diesel to operate. It must have DCC and must have a unique road number other than 3. I have my JMRI setup just in case someone shows up with a new loco and hasn't programmed it yet. Yeah, I have my LokProgramer V5 available too for those ESU decoders.
Got the snacks and drinks ready to go. Got train videos playing upstairs in the ready room for those who need to take a break.
Ops start about noon and runs until the last man or engineer standing.
and dang if there isn't the occasional person who brings in a stack of their own rolling stock. Gotta tell em, no, got plenty of that stuff ready to go.
 
WOW! What I want to know is if you installed a temp bridge or were you able to not use that section of track?
 
I like to do my own operation sessions. No cards or waybills since I simply use an engine to move cars out of areas that I'll be cleaning track. This is a good test for the cars couplers to work properly and find any problem areas.

When the track is clean I'll move cars back into the yards using the switching locomotive usually mixing the cars the same cars do not show up in the same yard. This takes some time to complete the moves.

During the next round robin at my house I'll assign certain jobs to the guys to move cars and make up trains. No strict rules, just pick up certain cars and move them to.....!

Miller Time.

Greg
 
D&J RailRoad said:
It must have DCC and must have a unique road number other than 3.
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Even that won't eliminate locos with the same numbers being brought along. I had that happen not long after the club went to DCC, and the locos involved weren't even the same type or from the same country, but did have the same number. Mine got changed because I arrived later and has stayed that way ever since.
 
Well, today was a complete disaster starting about 1/2 hour after the first operators arrived. There were 6 throttles operating and I think that over taxed the Digitrax system. It just couldn't keep up and people were loosing control of their trains. At one point, nobody could control their train and I had to do a shut down of the layout at the main power switch to stop them all. The power control on the throttles wouldn't respond on any of the throttles.
I brought up the JMRI panel pro to see what might be going over the loconet. Even after I stopped all locos that page just kept scrolling for about a minute. There is something else going on over the loconet that is jamming the system.
I noticed a repeating command from one of the Power Management boards. I looked into that a bit closer and it seems the board ID had changed and it was wrestling with another Power Management board for the same ID number. On top of that, all the reversing loop functions were turned on for both boards. I know I turned those off when I installed the boards because I don't have any reversing loops on the layout. Trust me, I know. I laid every inch of track and connected every inch of wire. Sorta like sayin, maybe ya have a basement in your house that you don't know about.
A switcher locomotive somehow changed its settings to go to full speed at speed step 2. I was using that all day yesterday setting up the trains in the classification yard and it operated flawlessly. It's a BLI switcher and I don't recall the decoder that's in it. I bought it about 6 years ago.
Another strange thing I found. A siding that I had a slide switch wired into the track from the mainline bus so I could cut power to that siding and park a loco there, somehow it reversed itself so when a loco rolled into the siding it would create a short on the rails. How the heck does that happen. It a simple mechanical connection. Both rails connected to the slide switch for a simple double pole double throw slide.
Needless to say, I didn't have time to control the classification yard as I normally do and the op session ended a lot sooner do to the classification yard being overloaded and nothing assigned to come back out.
I don't know if it's the Digitrax that couldn't handle the 4 or more throttles or maybe someone was messing with me somehow. After we got down to just three throttles, everything began operating just fine. That seems to ring a bell with me. When our club does shows at Timonium and we have more than four throttles on line, things go nuts like that. Decoders reprogram, people loose control of their trains, etc.
 
Does Digitrax radio require all cabs to be registered with an ID # to the base station? I know NCE does, and if someone tries to use one that hasn't, it screws the whole system up.
 
Yeah, the throttles do that when ya first plug them into the loconet. Otherwise they won't work until they are registered in. Sorta like using your secured Wi-Fi network.
One thing I did realize, I have a Digitraz Wi-Fi unit that allows people to run their trains with their phone. That has caused major problems in the past. This past week, I plugged that back into the system because I had forgot the problems it causes. That could explain the issue with to many throttles. It's going on ebay this afternoon. Let someone else wrestle with it.
 
Even on my modest layout I have six Digitrax throttles and rarely have any problems except on Friday when all the locomotives when crazy. It seems that they all formed a consist, I think. Anyway, I'm sure that when you try the system again with four or more throttles everything should work fine.

Greg
 
Greg@mnrr said:
Even on my modest layout I have six Digitrax throttles and rarely have any problems except on Friday when all the locomotives when crazy. It seems that they all formed a consist, I think. Anyway, I'm sure that when you try the system again with four or more throttles everything should work fine.

Greg
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I have a similar thing happen at the club when a short makes and breaks quickly (e.g. someone replacing a derailed loco back on the track) and I am running multiple engines in a consist. Usually affects locos in the middle more so than the front and rear. Probably because the NCE Advanced Consisting method, identifies the lead and rear engines by their positions, but any mid ones are just add-ins.
 
Ken: Which Digitrax system are you using on your layout? I doubt that six throttles would over tax your system since the basic Zephyr can handle 20 throttles and other systems up to 400 throttles. It could be an lack of power power issue, but more likely a shorted locomotive or piece of rolling shorted out sending analog current to the layout and the locomotives not having the decoders set not to operate on analog current when crazy.

Greg
 
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