The ROCK 3.0: Progress Report 02.18.14

So today, I pondered randomness on the layout.  Since my layout is small, I need to adapt real-life situations as much as possible to slow down the session.  As many of you might recall, I mentioned installing blue lights to protect certain industry tracks while they were loading.  The three industries I was thinking of are:

• Libbey-Owens-Ford - Tracks #1 and #2 - Float Glass Loading
• Ottawa Silica - Tracks #5 and #6 - Bagged Sand Loading
• Westclox - Track #1 Spots A through D - Clock Loading

All three of these are production plants that produce materials that will be loading into box cars.  Surely, the railroad can't just come along and start moving cars that are being loaded by plant employees.  So, I will install blue lights at the industries listed above.

Then, I began thinking about what time will the industries complete loading so I can turn off the blue lights to allow crews to switch the industries.  I came up with the following plan:

• LOF will complete unloading anywhere between 1:55pm and 3:10pm depending on the work load that day.
• Ottawa Silica - 2:50pm until 4:30pm
• Westclox - They load their completed products from the previous day early in the morning.  They can finish up anywhere between 9:50am and 11:15am.

So, I wrote a formula in Excel to create a random time for each industry.  For the Excel nerds out there, here's the formula.

=ROUND((RANDBETWEEN(StartTime*1000,EndTime*1000)/1000)*288,0)/288

The RANDBETWEEN function only works on integers.  Time when converted to a number in Excel would look something like this 0.687500 (4:30 PM).  Too have the RANDBETWEEN function calculate up to the 1000ths place, I multiplied the numbers by a 1000 each and then divided the answer by a thousand to be converted back to time.  The ROUND function rounds the time to the nearest 5 minutes.

Got it?  :-)

So, for the first session, #118 LaSalle Turn can't switch out Westclox until 10:00 AM.  For the crew of #217 Ottawa Local thrashing about, they can't switch the cars at LOF (float glass box car loading) until 2:45 PM and Ottawa Silica (box car bagged sand loading) until 3:10 PM.

I also use the RANDBETWEEN function to randomly select between 1 and 100.  Out of those 100 numbers, 6 will generate a flag that a sand hopper will be rejected.  I read in the Ottawa Sands book that cars were often rejected for one of the following reasons.  

• Rejected - Dirty
• Rejected - Cement Present
• Rejected - Old Sand Present
• Rejected - Leaks in Hopper
• Rejected - Bad Discharge Gates
• Rejected - Bad Hopper (or wrong type)

I ran the formula for all the sand hoppers for the first op session.  Three cars were rejected and will have to be handled by the crews just as they did back in the 70s on the ROCK!

I love it when a plan comes together!

Late this afternoon, I talked with Ben from BeNScale signals.  I found out the issue I was having was due not tinning all the wires for the signals.  The instructions indicated (at least the way I read them) that only the positive wire had to be tinned.  That was wrong.  Each micro wire has insulation on it that needs to be removed.  This is done by tinning the wire (or running the wire through a blob of hot solder).  

This evening, after dinner, I returned to the layout room and decided to test this theory.  Aspects that I couldn't light before, I was able to light immediately upon tinning the wire.  Sweet Lord!  It would have been nice to know this on Saturday, but glad I have it figured out now!  

In troubleshooting Sunday, I basically had torn the signal bridge back apart and removed all the heads. Repaired the signal bridge.  I have to route the wires down the signal bridge and install the 22 gauge feeder wires to the signal micro wires.  I have faith that all will work properly now.   I'll update tomorrow after the bridge has time to dry.  The handrails and top was loose requiring it to be re-glued.

While waiting, I worked on the blue flag lights.  I installed the two lights in the benchwork under the track at LOF.  I need to connect to the toggle switch and mount to the benchwork but that will be easy to do later.  I also soldered the feeder wires for four other blue flag lights for Ottawa Silica and Westclox.  I tested all.  By the way, I'm powering the 2mm Blue LEDs with 12V of power reduced by a 910K resistor.  This dims the light way down and allows just enough where you can see it easily, but not be overpowering.

Here are some pics of the LEDs installed between the rails at LOF.