Operations
The more traditional form of passenger train: a locomotive hauling a set of carriages. These present a challenge when they reach a terminus, because the locomotive needs to be replaced at the new "head" end of the train.
Our approach has the train driven from start to destination automatically. Once it arrives, it uncouples: there are magnets under the track at the correct locations. The schedule driving the train has a "split" operation at the end of the sequence to split the locomotive from the carriages.
A human train driver is then needed. They will bring a new locomotive from an engine shed or "spur" and couple it to the departure end of the train. A DTM30 control panel gives them control over the trackwork; an "interlock" allows them to prevent traincontroller from driving through the same track while it's happening. Because the platform blocks have a sensor at each end AND a sensor covering the middle, Traincontroller can detect the new locomotive arriving in the block and automatically couple it. Because we've been careful with sensor positions, it can use train tracking to "know" which locomotive is where.
The sequence required is:
- Press the "allow entry/exit" button for the newly arrived train so its track LED is unlit.
- Reserve the station area for manual control by pressing Portsmouth "Reserve". The "manual" LED will light. You will now have manual control of the points in the station area, and no trains will be driven in automatically.
- Select the loco on the spur using a throttle.
- Using the panel, select the points appropriately and drive the loco out from the spur onto the carriages, and couple to them.
- Press the "allow entry/exit" button for the newly arrived train so its track LED is lit.
- Release the station area to automatic control by pressing Portsmouth "Reserve". The "computer" LED will light
Once the train has departed, the human operator then needs to move the "old" locomotive to the engine shed or spur. Again, this is done manually. Traincontroller tracks it, so it knows which locomotive is in which spur or engine shed.
- Press the "allow entry/exit" button for the newly arrived train so its track LED is unlit.
- Reserve the station area for manual control by pressing Portsmouth "Reserve". The "manual" LED will light. You will now have manual control of the points in the station area, and no trains will be driven in automatically.
- Select the loco on the platform using a throttle.
- Using the panel, select the points appropriately and drive the loco out from the station and onto the spur.
- Press the "allow entry/exit" button for the vacated platform so its track LED is lit.
- Release the station area to automatic control by pressing Portsmouth "Reserve". The "computer" LED will light.
This is the mainstay of modern railway operation: a train that can run in either direction with no discernible "locomotive". Unsurprisingly, we have several of these, between two and 8 units long. They can visit any passenger station (although the Eurostar is blocked from Clanfield because it is too long).
These trains are very simple to run in Traincontroller. You simply tell them to go from A to B and they do, because they don't need to worry about direction. All of our unit either have resistor wheelsets at the "undriven" end or a lighting decoder, so they present an electrical load. That means that either end of the train is detected by the occupancy detectors, and either end will be automatically stopped on reaching a platform.
A schedule in Traincontroller can be considered a "recipe" for moving a train from one location to another. It is programmed with the start and end location, the blocks to visit, the route to be taken to get there, and how the train is to be controlled (manually or automatically). When it is run, it reserves the track, sets the point positions and tracks the train progress. If it is controlling the train, it sets its speed. Schedules are the basis for automatic train operations on the South Downs Railway.
Schedules can be run by clicking on them in a list, or in response to button presses. One clever feature of traincontroller is the schedule can be executed by pressing a "start location" and "destination location" button, and traincontroller will find the sequence assigned to that pair of buttons. In this way, we have a simple switchboard that has buttons for each main track area where you can press these buttons to set of a train.
A slight downside is: we now have quite a lot of schedules, and we're starting to wonder if there are too many and if they can be rationalised. you can have schedule sequences, where a set of schedules will be run with one train: that might provide a way to break the basic set of schedules down to a simpler set of operations.