Self Inflected Problems

During the last session, the crew switching Hamilton reported that 2 of the 4 turnouts were no longer moving when the button was hit.

Of course, it was 1 turnout per crossover, which made it even more inconvenient.

I use tortoise switch machines under the layout to move the points on anything and they are driven by a LCC node. Most of the turnouts are driven from the Nucleo DevKit nodes, which can be configured with different hardware options on port C (the dedicated tortoise port).

After looking at the node for Hamilton, I realized that I had pulled two of the driver ICs out.

Whoops.

Documenting the Layout - Map and Industry List

As a layout owner/builder, you know your layout way more in depth than you operating crews do.

One way to help your crews out are "job aids" which is a catch all for the various paperwork and references that you provide to them.

Before the last session in December, I created a line map of the railroad and a listing of the various industries on the railroad.

Here's the stack of them ready to be grabbed.