I have just added this control switch to the automation computer:

What the heck does that even do? Well, it’s rather simple, really: the mainline in front of the main station has 2 tracks, and one of the automated trains is parked on the mainline 2nd track. That’s right. I park one of the automated trains right on the mainline. Unfortunately that prevents the Saturday Operators from exiting the yard using the 2nd track, which makes things “interesting” when we have a lot of traffic. If only I could program the computer to move that train occupying the 2nd track when it’s not in use!?

Well that’s exactly what I’ve done, and here’s a video of this in action:

And it’s not a complicated task, right, right ?

All this automation has to do is move the freight engine a bit, clear the block to the siding, throw the switch, and reverse in the siding. Without hitting the passenger train already stored there. And then throw back the switch.

Now imagine you’re doing that, but with your eyes closed, without looking at the trains, nor really knowing where they are precisely -- wild guesses are accepted. That’s how the automation proceeds. And you need to cover all the contingencies that could potentially arise, even the ones you have not thought of before, otherwise some of the Saturday Operators will rant at you. Oh, and at the end of the day, the automation needs to put the train back where it belongs, so that the normal automation can resume the next day. Oh, and the thing also needs to work even if one of the trains is missing or broken. Within reason.

Now to be fair, this is not a new idea. I got this idea back in…

2019 … yep 2019 !

I tried to implement it using the Conductor v1 script in 2019, but the logic became frankly quickly overwhelming. So I put this aside and worked instead of enhancing the automation software to be able to cope with more complex tasks. I started working on Conductor 2 instead. Then there’s this Covid Lockdown thing that threw a wrench in any plans whoever had anyway, and finally in 2022 I had my 2nd prototype version of Conductor 2 starting to work, and it took most of 2023 to deploy and fix issues as they came along. And finally I was in a position to work on that feature I had put aside years ago.

Even that way, the first deployments were… interesting. Took me a couple weeks to fine tune the “saturday mode” logic to be reliable and iron out some edge cases. I also found 2 interesting bugs in the Conductor 2 engine and fixed them as well.

It comes with an update to the main display that let visitors know when the Saturday Operators are running their trains: