It’s been a while since I’ve updated my public project list… 2021 in fact as well as a follow up in June 2021!

So it’s time to look back at what has been accomplished and what the future/pending projects are in the pipeline.

First, it’s important to remember that the goal of such a project list is just to give an overall direction and priorities. As such it needs to be kept dynamic. And indeed since 2021, a lot of work has been done that was never anticipated -- a few planned things got done, and a few new projects were added and completed:

Let’s dig in the details of what got accomplished -- this is a mix of “planned projects” and, unsurprisingly, a lot of on-the-spot maintenance that takes precedence over projects:

• 2021-02-06: Repair turnout T320.
• 2021-04-18: Repair dead spot on B320.
• 2021-06-05: Clean and make the B91 siding available to Saturday Operators. This has never been put to any good use as far as I know, and that siding is probably dirty again by now.
• 2021-06-26: Building Lightings update. That’s actually the start of multiple weeks dealing with lighting. Allen and I installed a new luminous display, and I spent a lot of time trying to identify how the building lighting was powered and how functional it was, and writing a supporting documentation for the lighting at the end.
• 2021-07-06: Repair turnout T450.
• 2021-09-20: The “Train Vision” project got installed. After an early prototype demonstration in June, I spent my entire summer working on the project and installing it.
• 2021-10-28: Repair turnout T161, for the 2nd time.
• 2021-11-09: The layout room gets (partially) flooded when it rains heavily! Hilarity ensues.
• 2021-11-11: Repair dead spot on B320. A different one this time.
• 2021-11-15: Repair dead spot on B321.
• 2021-11-22: Auto-reverser for the Bridgeport Ballon Track #2.
• 2021-11-28: The “Cracker Jack” billboard from Allen finally gets installed. We started that in June and I stupidly killed the electronics board of the first one so I had to get a replacement.
• 2022-01-08: I have a new git repository for documentation and I spent quite some time finding documents and organizing them there.
• 2022-01-16: Repair turnout T111.
• 2022-02-06: Repair turnout T161, for the 3rd and last time for sure.
• 2022-02-09: Understanding and documenting turnout frog power routing. That’s a side effect of the work on T161, after 3 “fixes” to that turnout, and wanting to understand the root issue.
• 2022-02-15: Repair turnout T161. Sigh.
• 2022-05-04: Repair turnout T840 on the Branchline.
• 2022-05-06: The Branchline automation has been quite problematic, with engines not living long enough on it. Here’s one more attempt followed by another one.
• 2022-06-05: Still dealing with rain leaks ruining equipment in the workbench area.
• 2022-09-04: Fixing dead tracks in Stockton Yard with Allen’s help.
• 2022-09-18: An (aborted) attempt at fixing turnouts T1 and T2.
• 2022-10-02: Dealing with a dead NCE EB1 circuit breaker on the Branchline.
• 2022-10-09: Prepare new Walthers Mainline UP SD70ACes for the mainline automation… and have fun dealing with issues with these 2 engines for the freaking next 2 years essentially!
• 2022-10-31: Repair turnout T111. Again.
• 2023-01-07: Repair dead spot on B320-B02.
• 2023-01-18: The Rapido RDC SP 10 is back on the Branchline and works 2 days before breaking down, leading to consuming time to fix it.
• 2023-01-20: Repair dead spot on B321.
• 2023-03-26: Orion spent a lot of time cleaning the layout scenery.
• 2023-04-30: Replacing one of the dead 60s-era overhead lights to LEDs.
• 2023-05-21: Conductor v2 is now live and driving the automation! That’s the result of 2 years of work updating the automation software. I didn’t just swap it “as-is” -- I’ve been testing it on the Randall layout since August last year and adjusting all issues I did find.
• 2023-08-17: Repair dead spot on B504.
• 2023-11-06: The Vision laptop had been flaky for a while and after spending more time than desired on it, I finally changed for a separate LCD screen.
• 2023-11-11: Orion replaced the dead 60s-era overhead light above Lodi by LEDs under my supervision.
• 2023-11-25: Demonstration of the SDB Project for the Trolley automation! I’ve been working on SDB on and off for a year now so it was nice to finally be able to test it out.
• 2023-12-07: The Polar Express’ BLI Hudson 4-6-4 engine is dead, so I got a new Bachmann Berkshire 2-8-4 for it instead and reprogrammed the automation for it.
• 2024-01-29: Using new sensors on the Mountain block panel for train detection, to address some detection issues with the existing sensors.
• 2024-02-19: There’s been numerous reports from the Saturday Operators about loss of power in the mountain and other parts of the layout. So I did some measurements, and adjusted one of the NCE boosters that was not properly configured.
• 2024-04-24: Orion just completed this new Fairfield scenery.
• 2024-04-25: A new “Saturday Mode” automation helps remove the automated train from the mainline to leave more room to the Saturday Operators.
• 2024-05-31: A new Booters Voltage Display has been designed and installed.
• 2024-06-22: Orion replaced the two dead 60s-era overhead lights above the Mountain, under my supervision. These have been dead since 2017.
• 2024-07-14: Added a block sensor for B830 on the Branchline, which was missing (I just couldn’t figure the wiring before, and needed to come back to it… it’s now been done).
• 2024-07-29: Moved the Branchline Polarity Inverser. This is something I’ve been wanting to do since 2019 to better automate the Branchline usage. Orion has been asking for this for a while for different reasons (he just wants to run on it). This unfortunately means undoing a “fix” I had done to bridge T324 and T821 together.
• 2024-08-02: Experiment with Track Cam Monitor, a dedicated tablet and camera to provide a view of the Napa mainline from the Stockton yard area where operators are.
• 2024-08-09: A new Branchline toggle for B870, the long “reverse” loop.
• 2024-08-21: Repair turnout T324 on the Branchline.
• 2024-11-19: Investigate Richmond Yard blocks falsely triggering block detection in the Mountain.
• 2024-11-24: Understand and fix Napa turnouts lack of power.
• 2024-12-16: Install Ambiance, a new project with a LED strip controlled by the automation computer. To be fair, I’ve been thinking of that 2 years ago, it just wasn’t a priority yet.

Pff… that’s a lot of tasks done. And I spared you the details of “the automation broke, must be Tuesday”. I’ve had 5 or 6 engine changes on the Branchline, and the whole Walthers UP engine was a saga where I had to keep replacing the engines back-and-forth when they broke, or got fixed just to break again later, etc.

Planned projects like SDB, TCM, and Conductor 2 involved a lot of the software development on a months-long timescale and it’s something I do over time at home before bringing it to the layout. So most of these are “invisible” yet are quite time consuming.

Half of my time is ensuring the automation runs smoothly. Another half is software development for future projects. The third half of the time is figuring out repairs to dead spots or turnouts. Pick 2 out of 3. Guess which tasks get deprioritized?

It’s worth noting that time being limited, these new projects necessarily displaced previously planned projects. Thus in the next post, we’ll discuss an overview of pending projects -- some of them dating back from 2018 or 2019, and that I just kept postponing due to on-the-spot re-prioritization.