I finally finished the last phase of the Track Cam Monitor project: the 3rd camera is now installed and configured to show all the back-of-the-mountain trains on the tablet display!

Track Cam Monitor (a.k.a. TCM) is a project I started last year: the goal of this project is to monitor a train staging yard with remote tracks out of sight. The "kiosk mode" Android application displays feeds from RTSP cameras.

In the case of Randall, the purpose is to display the tracks which are not visible on the “other side of the mountain”. When the Saturday Operators stand by the main Valley control panel, they can’t see the tracks on the other side of the room. The tablet project views from 3 cameras in a concise display conveniently located next to the main control panel:

The cameras installed are Tapo C110 cameras. They are excellent for this purpose -- very small footprint, very lightweight to install, and at a very attractive low price. Here’s the latest one that I installed on the top of the window -- it captures the view of the Summit tracks at the top and the Napa tracks going towards the Sultan tunnel at the bottom level:

As is customary at the end of the year, the Polar Express is back on automation during December:

This uses the Père Marquette #1225 class 2-8-4 Berkshire steam engine, matching the “prototype” from the eponymous book and movie.

The RDC SP 10 failed again on the Branchine automation. Courtesy of Orion and the Willcox estate trains, we are now running the Western Pacific Zephyrette on the Branchine automation:

The Zephyrette on the Branchline Canyon Bridge.
Note the tunnel portal on the image above.

This engine is a great Proto 2000 with a LokSound decoder and a great rich sound.

After a few runs, the engine oddly stopped in an unusual place… That’s where we learned that the Branchline at Randall has some “interesting” curve tolerances involving that tunnel portal -- here’s a close up of the tunnel portal seen on the image above:

Interestingly we had been running the Rapido RDC engines (both SP10 and ATSF) there for years, so how come? Well it turns out they are just narrower by half a millimeter. No kidding -- doesn’t take much. They were actually rubbing a very very tiny bit against the tunnel pillar.

The problem was easily solved by taking the pillar off (it’s just lightly glued in place) and we’re going to reglue it a couple millimeters in the curve.

If you want to know more about the Western Pacific Zephyrette, I suggest this fascinating read, especially all the insane technical details on page 4: https://www.wplives.com/passenger-operations/self-propelled/zephyrette-01.php 

Here’s the latest visible change on the “train exhibit”:

By the entrance sits the “Vision” screen -- it projects videos from a few live cameras around the layout. When there’s no train motion detected on the cameras, it displays pre-recorded videos I made on the layout -- the same ones I have on my YT channel,  I have about 140 video clips now.

Next to that screen is the RTAC tablet display. It shows the state of the automation -- which trains are running, or what will run next, and details like speed and direction of the trains. That little 10-inch tablet is a ChuWi Hi10 that I got back in 2017, running my custom Android RTAC app, and it has lasted a surprisingly long time given that it’s basically on 24/7. A couple times lately the tablet has turned off, but I got it running again after some careful massaging. Still, at some point, I expect it to entirely stop working so I wanted a plan B before that happens.

And the plan B is to merge the display from the tablet onto the Vision screen display. So that’s exactly what I’ve done, the changes are in the Vision project, and we can see the result above. I actually like it and I removed the tablet since it’s now redundant. Amusingly, plan A was to update RTAC to run on a more modern Android 13 tablet -- I have done that and I had it at home ready for deployment. Out of curiosity, I implemented plan B integrating both features on the same display screen, and now I like it better. That’s why I try things. There is no wrong choice here.

Most visitors will only need to see the status line under the videos -- it indicates whether the automation is stopped, or whether a train runs. For my own edification, I have details on the automation shown on the left side:

That display on the side is purposely simple and not too fancy. I thought about doing something like an “old monitor” look or an LCARS interface and opted not to go for the gimmick.

A lot of the work I do on the layout and its automation has to do with maintenance and “invisible” infrastructure -- things people don’t see at all, but keep the entire thing running. In software development, we call these tasks “KTLO” (a.k.a. “Keep the Lights On”). Part of the invisible part of the Randall Model Railroad Automation is all my remote monitoring of the automation. I can keep track of what the trains are doing, if they are doing it properly, with notifications when things don’t run as planned, and I can (in a limited fashion) remotely operate the trains if needed.

As such, I spend about the last month working on an entire new dashboard infrastructure, which results in a web page giving a dashboard like this:

This page gives me an overview of which computers are on, wherever the automated lines are active (the “toggles”), and which train ran last, and whether it completed its run properly.

I recently expanded that dashboard with a “performance” tab that lets me see how the trains behave on their respective route:

Description of Issue

The top of the mountain is an area known as “Summit”. The mainline has two sidings around the mainline. The siding B372 has never been used and both turnouts on either side are non-functional. It now contains a little station which is where the Automation Passenger Train stops and reverses. The siding B371 used to work fine, and although it hasn’t been used in a while, we may restore it at some point.

A view of the mainline track to be replaced -- from before the bridge up to the first turnout before the signal bridge.

Just before turnout T370, the mainline track was of sub-par quality. There was a couple millimeter gap in the track, and it was held in place using hot glue. Once in a while we would get derailments there, and at some point we got a dead spot, and I did some repairs back in 2018.

Turnout T370 had been the cause of derailments in the past and I had spiked it. Anyhow, the Fulgurex motor underneath was disconnected. Here’s how I left the track back in 2018, and you can see the poor track alignment, and that’s when I was amazed to find the track was held using some hot glue:

Back in 2018 when I soldered that bonding wire to fix the track continuity problem, I was surprised when the part below the solder started melting and that’s how I discovered that this was held using hot glue. It must have been done a long time as it had blended with the rest of the scenery. Anyhow, as I wrote back then, that bonding wire was supposed to be a temporary fix. And now we’re finally circling back and taking care of it.

Since only one of the two Santa Fe RDC engines currently runs satisfactorily, I’m currently running a little experiment with matching Santa Fe RDC 191 with the SP 10 RDC:

That combo works well. I checked and both engines are correctly speed matched. It’s certainly a non-prototypical setup though. I had previously run them together as an April’s Fools joke.

On the workbench, I got a new duplicate of the UP GE 9538:

UP 9538 has been diligently working the mainline since May and, although I initially had some reservations on the TCS decoder, I got it working quite satisfactorily. I decided to have an exact replica -- same engine number, same motor -- so that I can just trivially swap them every other month without having to reprogram the automation every time. That should help give the engine a much deserved break.

I also got a new UP SD40-2. This is an older Bachmann design with an Econami decoder. From experience, these work quite well. I’ve tested 3450 on the mainline, and it seems very adequate. I’ll program it in the automation soon, giving me one more engine to swap from time to time.

The Santa Fe RDC 191+192 that I put back in automation is giving me some issues. It just keeps stopping from time to time in the tunnel before YouBet or the tunnel to the branchline canyon. Then, much later, it seems to respond to DCC commands again yet at the point the automation’s recovery mechanism has already given up.

Today I went to see where it got stuck and I noticed that one of the two cars seems to have no power, and the other car is not powerful enough to drag both units -- that’s to be expected since I “downgraded” these engines from two to one motor per car, so they don’t have a lot of pulling power. Thus right now I’m just going to run this as a single car train and monitor how that works. I may want to upgrade both engines with a LokSound “Capacitor / KeepAlive” to see if that helps.

The UP Passenger has this nice UP Observation/dome car provided by Jim, which has recently started to derail:

It consistently derails when going in reverse on the same spot over the T311 turnout. That area is very hard to reach -- farther than arms’ length -- so I can’t just get close and look carefully at the wheels on the turnout. It does also derail when I run just that one car with the same engine:

One suggestion from Orion was to turn the truck around, so I’ll try that another time.

The older and more “primitive” dome car works well, so the UP passenger train is back to having a single car:

The Rapido Santa Fe RDC 191+192 is back on the Branchline automation:

What’s new about it? Well, last time, they both totally stopped working and I did a major overhaul of both engines:

• Replaced speakers,
• Replaced motors,
• Changed them to single-motor operation.

The original motors were known to become problematic. I contacted Rapido a while ago and they sent me new motors. Replacing the motors is a bit of a hassle as the RDC needs to be disassembled to the chassis.

These units have 2 motors, one per truck. With time, they tend to get out of sync and “fight” each other. Since the Branchline is mostly flat, the units are ok with running on just one motor. I simply disconnect the other motor and remove one gear in the trucks to make one truck free-rolling.

One thing both Orion and I would like is better usage of the SIA + DFS.

The SIA + DFS offers 6 tracks:

• The left most track for the Trolley… I’d like to reserve that one once I automate it again.
• 2 “mainline” tracks for the SIA.
• 3 “sidings” tracks for the DFS on the right.

These are the tracks in green on the schema / plan v8: Randall Map - Track Plan + Sensors 8.pdf

There are 2 separate issues here:

• Control of the turnouts.
• Power routing for the tracks.