Model Railroad System
2.2.2
Overall User Manaual
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This tutorial will go through the steps of creating a simple CTC panel for a passing siding. First, after starting up the Dispatcher program, we will click on the New
CTC
Window
toolbar button and get a New
CTCPanel
dialog box, as shown below. See Section Creating a new CTC Panel for more information.
We fill in a name and select the Simple
Mode
check button. Clicking on Create
gives us the blank panel shown below.
Now we can start adding track work and control elements. But first a brief discussion about how things are structured. First of all every object has a unique name and every object is in a named control point.
A "control point" is a collection of track work elements and control panel elements that relate to a single controlled feature, typically a turnout of some sort. The control point usually includes a code button, which is a button that initiates some change in the track work (turnouts, signals, etc.), based upon the settings of one or more control panel elements. In this tutorial we will be creating four control points, CP1, CP2, Main, and Siding. CP1 is the turnout at the Western (left) end of the siding, CP2 is the turnout at the Eastern (right) end of the siding, Main is the mainline trackage, and Siding is the siding track. The Main and Siding control points won't have any control panel objects and are only being used to contain the simple track elements. These are essentially "dummy" control points and are just being used as containers for track work that does not contain any centrally controllable track work.
First we will create turnout 1 (named Switch1) by selecting Add
Object
on the Panel
menu, which gives us the Add
Panel
Object
to
panel
dialog box, shown below. See Section Adding, Editing, and deleting elements to CTC Panel Windows for more information.
We will "flip" the turnout to give it the proper orientation. Turnouts can be flipped and can also be rotated to one of eight positions (45 degree increments). We will use the cross hairs to roughly position the turnout, as shown below.
Clicking the Add
button places the turnout on the track work schematic, as shown below.
You can fine tune the location of the object by making small changes to the X and Y coordinates after you have roughly placed the object using the cross hairs. You can always go back and edit an object by using the Edit
Object menu item on the Panel
menu and then selecting the name of the object to edit.
Next, we will add a switch plate (named SwitchPlate1), again by selecting Add
Object
on the Panel
menu, again using the @ Add Panel
Object
to
panel
dialog box, shown below.
We will enter the name of the turnout it controls (Switch1) and the serial number of the MRD2-U board that will be controlling the Switch-It board powering the switch motor. Again we will use the cross hairs to place the switch plate. The result is shown below.
Finally, we will add a code button, as shown below.
We repeat this process to add the mainline, the siding, and the second turnout, with its switch plate and code button. Place the second turnout next, then add the mainline and the siding tracks. Once the turnouts have been placed, the locations of the endpoints of the straight track sections are easy to select. Finally we get the panel shown below.
Once the panel has been completed, we can use the Wrap
As
menu item under the File
menu to create a "wrapped" version of the generated program. This is a self-contained, stand-alone executable program that implements the CTC panel. See Section Wrapped CTC Panel Programs for more information.
In this tutorial we will transfer a layout designed in XtrackCAD to a dispatcher CTC panel. XtrackCAD implements five type of "Layout Control" objects. These are objects that can be manipulated and stored with a layout file that hold layout control information (called scripts). These objects are:
XtrackCAD imposes no particular syntax for the scripts. For layouts using LCC and Dispatcher, the scripts are defined as one or two LCC event numbers. A LCC event number is a 64-bit number formatted as eight pairs of hexadecimal digits separated by periods. For actions, it is a single event id that is consumed by the actuator (eg switch machine or signal). For sensors (eg block detection sensors, point sensors), it is a pair of event numbers separated by a colon. These event numbers are produced by the sensor for each of two states. For blocks, the first event number is produced when the block becomes occupied and the second event number is produced when the block becomes unoccupied. For point sense scripts the first event is produced when the points become normal aligned and the second event is produced when the points become reverse aligned.
The layout we will add is a simple passing siding on a main line as shown below.
We have already filled in the control elements for this layout in the XtrackCAD layout file.
After loading the XtrackCAD file into the Dispatcher, the dispatcher shows a graph of the layout, detailing the various track and control elements and their connectedness.
Next we will create a fresh CTC Panel by clicking on the "New CTC Window" button. This gives us a "New CTCPanel" dialog box.
We will give the CTC Panel a name (Passing Siding), select the OpenLCB Mode checkbox, and fill in the OpenLCB transport constructor and its opts.
After clicking the Create button we have a new fresh CTC Panel window.
First we will transfer track segment 1, the western most segment of the main line just before the siding. We will use the right button to get the context menu and then select "Add To Panel" on this menu.
This gives us an "Add Panel Object to panel" dialog box. Notice how various fields are preloaded. We will shortly change a few things: remove the unneeded label, add a control point, and position the track on the schematic using the cross hairs.
And after some minor updates, we have this:
Next we will add the western turnout. This is track segment 3. Again we right click on the segment node on the Dispatcher main window and select "Add to Panel". Note how most of the fields are filled in from the layout file.
Because this is a turnout with a switch motor, we will also add a switch plate. The only additional work needed is positioning it.
Our panel is now like this:
Finally we will add one of the signals, CP1E, which is node number 19.
This gives us this panel:
The remaining track elements and switch plates can be added by repeating these steps.
Finally, the signal plates and code buttons can be added using the Panel menu on the CTC Panel.
Now we can save the file and wrap it into a ready to run executable.