Model railway operation using staff control

I had an enjoyable operating session last night at the home of one of the local members of the Australasian Division of the NMRA. The layout is a fictional railway line located between North Geelong in Victoria and Eden on the far south coast of NSW. As a consequence, the line is standard gauge. The locos and rollingstock come from both the Victorian and NSW railways, as well as Freight Australia, Great Northern, R&H, and National Rail.

The layout is controlled using an older version of Easy DCC and works to a train order sequence. A card for each train gives instructions as to the origin and destination, and any operational requirements en route. For example, one of my trains last night was a goods train that had instructions to pick up and set out wagons at various locations along the way. Shunting in a number of yards and keeping to sequence was indeed quite a challenge, especially if through trains were waiting on me clearing the main to allow them uninterrupted passage.

There were about nine of us working these trains, including what the Americans would call yardmasters at the terminus points (North Geelong and Eden) and at the key crossing point (Latrobe Valley) midway between the two.

Operation was an interesting combination of radio control and staff exchange. This meant that one couldn't enter a new section of the railroad without permission (obtained through using the individual radio control handsets and microphones) and without getting the staff for that section. Upon leaving the section, the staff had to be returned. The photo below shows the staffs for the five key sections of the layout. You can see that there are two trains in operation by the fact that the staff for section B and section D are not in the box.

You can also see in the photo how the staffs are stored in a vertical position. The staffs sit in the box and actually operate a switch at the base of the wooden holders to indicate when a staff is in position in the wooden box or has been removed. The staff set-up also controls the signals to give the correct colour light signal for approaching trains. Very ingenious indeed!

I really enjoyed the operating night and using another type of digital control system. I am becoming more interested in using digital control every time I have the chance to experience a real operational model railroad, rather than simple loop layouts that are popular at model railway exhibitions. Operating a Victorian/NSW layout was also an interesting experience. It was certainly nice to see all those Austrains, Auscision and Trainorama locos and wagons in use.

Thanks to Rob and the other chaps for a really great evening!

Lake Hume

In a previous blog post about my current layout Winmar, I mentioned a possible branch line extension to Lake Hume.

My fictional railway junction of Winmar is just north of Albury. The equally fictional Lake Hume branch extends east towards a real body of water called Lake Hume. A real railway (the Wodonga-Cudgewa line) to Lake Hume exists on the Victorian side of the border. My Lake Hume branch would be the NSW equivalent of the Cudgewa line and would reflect the historical parochialism of state-based railway systems.

As such, some recent thinking has converged around the idea of using my (yet to be constructed) model railway terminus at Lake Hume as the basis for this small exhibition layout I have been rambling on about. If I did this, then this module would be available for both my home-based layout AND for exhibitions. I could develop the module along the lines of a four metre (a bit more than 12 foot) display with a traverser at one end, similar to layouts popular in the UK at exhibitions. I could perhaps turn the terminus into a L-shape with that power station or mineral sands industry extending onto a new baseboard beyond the station and yard itself.

And, what might be doubly appealing, I could run a session using some of my Victorian locos and wagons as well and pretend I was in Victoria! Don't know what the Victorians might think of that scenario but I am sure most exhibition-goers wouldn't know the prototypical difference. Hmmm.