The Randall Museum in San Francisco hosts a large HO-scale model model railroad. Created by the Golden Gate Model Railroad Club starting in 1961, the layout was donated to the Museum in 2015. Since then I have started automatizing trains running on the layout. I am also the model railroad maintainer. This blog describes various updates on the Randall project and I maintain a separate blog for all my electronics not directly related to Randall.
2024-04-24 - Yellow Trolley on the Automation
Category RandallI have continued fighting with the Trolley Automation. A couple months ago, I fixed the turnout where the Orange Trolley kept losing power. However, that did not solve the reliability problem -- the Bowser streetcar just doesn’t run reliably. There’s nothing wrong when I try the LokSound decoder on the bench, but it just doesn’t always start, and it often does not stop. Not a good thing when I’m trying to automate something!
Instead, I swapped it for this Bachmann #6119 Streetcar:
The software part of the automation uses my “Software Defined Block” (SDB) on the ESP32; this gets the distance sensor data and simulates track occupancy. That is published to JMRI using MQTT. My RTAC automation controller software then uses the track occupancy data to control the trolley’s movement.
Here’s a video of the trolley in action:
Now the running characteristics of this trolley are a bit primitive. There’s no sound, and light is minimal. The motor is fairly crude, doesn’t run well at low speed, and it has a distinctive gearing now. Yet it runs reliably, and that’s important for a daily automation routine!