Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Conversions and Being Converted
For a while now I’ve wanted to add some more DCC conversion instructions for the site and in the last week I’ve been making a start on them.
The conversions are for the class 08 and a pair of Farish steam engines - a West Country class and a 4MT. As far as I know all the steam engines (except the recent V2) use the same or similar chassis, so it should be easy enough to adapt the instructions for other locos.
Progress so far has been to strip down the locos to extract the parts necessary for sending to Gerry Spencer in exchange for his modified parts. When these come back I will be able to finish off the conversions - and the instructions.
Those of you who have been following the site will know I’ve been writing my own DCC control software, but progress has been very slow with a few difficult to fix glitches in the block detection code and, frankly, not enough time to devote to writing software.
So I’ve taken the decision to convert to using Freiwalds TrainController.
It will be a shame not to be writing my own software - I always like the way custom software enables me to get exactly what I want - but using a commercial solution will allow me to get things running much faster. I also felt that using custom software wasn’t helpful for people who wanted to follow along and create their own computer controlled layout. Anyone reading these pages can get hold of a copy of TrainController and use techniques I post here.
So far I’m having a play with the trial version to see what it can do. Sadly it won’t let you drive trains for more than about two minutes before telling you to buy the full version, but I’m looking forward to playing with the layout designer.