Tony and I had another operating weekend in February. The principal purpose this time was to "catch up" on schedules for operating the newer areas of the railway.
I'd completed the engine shed area in preparation, including installing the turntable. Finally we could work out how the "steam excursion" trains would be operated. I've described the details in the "operations" section, but much of the effort was planning how the "train sets" feature of Traincontroller would be used.
If you have rolling stock that is sometimes operated joined to other stock but sometimes on its own, you can use "train sets" to manage them. For example a rake of coaches can be coupled to a locomotive, but the locomotive can also be driven on its own into an engine shed. Traincontroller lets you join and separate elements to create a train, then break it up into its parts when the carriages are put back into a siding for example.
In most cases "joins" are done automatically, using "join by train tracking". This requires detection sections where a loco will enter a block that's occupied by carriages, so that it knows the train has entered the same block. When the loco speed is reduced to zero the two become joined together. At the end of a main line schedule at a terminus, the schedules are programmed to separate the engine; the only steps then needed are those to put the carriages back into the engine shed.
We can now operate a small goods loco to the factory siding at Clanfield. The siding has its own block, and the very end has another small block for a class 08 shunter. We needed to add 4 new detection sections at Clanfield, for which I'd pre-installed a BD4. The point at the entrance to the platform is now a "start" sensor for the platform's block. The factory siding has 3 detectors: one for the majority of its length; one at the very far end where a shunter will sit; and a short one between the shunter and the majority of the length. The latter is so that the shunter entering the siding's block can be detected, so an auto join can happen.
We've also planned for the control panel needed for Portsmouth. there will need to be some pushbuttons for manual separate and join operations - all of which we worked out by testing the sequence of events.