Katzhagen - Archive - July 2013
Katzhagen's 10th anniversary - or: Guess Who's Coming to the Jubilee
The analogy regarding a well known movie's title should be obvious and accordingly some disagreeable felicitators came to visit.
While moles managed to be a major nuissance - too often and too obtrusive for my taste - during the past years, now ants provided for some trouble to much of my chagrin. They had sapped the tracks' sub-contruction in one place which before successfully resisted the ravages of time for ten years.
The result was that the track in this place suffered from a significant tilt which led to the impression of a careening ship when a train was passing by...
Some chemistry from an ewer, a spade, some new sand and...
... a tubular level were sufficient to repair the damage.
Fortynately, remedy turned out be easy. After providing the ants with a "Sod-off-shower" the lawn was removed along the flagstones' edges and the affected flagstones were raised using the spade's lever effect. A tubular level was used to find out the required amount of sand and to compact it. The lawn sods were put back into their places and the complete repair was done in less than two hours.
Of course the tracks had to be tested extensively after this remedial maintenance...
Meeting of IC and freight train in evening sun. A nice relaxing moment after some civil engineering works.
The spirits I summoned...
After the cameras and the remote control interface were put into operations a few weeks before, friends from Switzerland and Canada had been testing this gear copiously...
... and bombarded me with more or less suitable suggestions for improvement.
And these were legitimate - to much of my chagrin. As a result I did several night shifts in order to do a rewrite of the interface for running trains remotely. The resulting facelift on the left shows the initial display for scheduling trains.
The little vehicle icons show the related tractive unit's position on the tracks, while clear tracks are indicated by a corresponding symbol. After selecting a tractive unit to ride by clicking onto its icon, the page will refresh and only icons for the tracks which are direct reachable for the selected unit will be displayed. A click onto a track symbol determines the unit's destination track for its next ride. Further rides can be scheduled now by repeating this procedure or the train can be started. The requiered turnout and signal operations as well as the train's speed will be controlled by the computer in the basement then...
Entering a short command at the terminal's prompt for starting a train of course is done faster - but lacking a graphical display one has to keep in mind the trains' positions then...
