Great Northwestern Railway

So ALL the efforts, costs, brain damage and such to get LCC integrated into the layout is paying off in this one new step.  Let me explain. With LCC, each node is essentially its very own stand-alone microprocessor, capable of processing commands INDEPENDENTLY of a central PC or other server.  It just is connected to at the CAN bus, either looking for commands to respond (consumer) to or to issue them (producer).  SO... this addresses one of the goals of integrating LCC into my layout.  Sometimes I like to come down into the layout room and just run trains.  I don't have others with me, and for me, its a great way to unwind.  When I do that, I don't want to have to futz with turning on a PC and getting it going.  Ya, I know, some say it is not that big of a deal.  But if I am only going to be there for 5 or 15 minutes, seems like a hassle to mess with that.  I just want to through the power switch on, have the layout come to life, and run some trains.  Other times, I enjoy ho

A few have asked how I wire out the blocks with the LCC system.  On my last layout expansion, I put all the electronics under the layout.  This resulted in a lot of hours working kinda sitting up leaning back while working overhead.  Never liked it and was undesirable.  On this buildout, I tried to minimize the amount of work under the layout and directed ALL my wiring to pull-out shelves at strategic locations.  Here is a pic of one of those shelves.  As you can see, it’s nothing fancy – just 1/2” plywood on a frame of 1x2 slides. The only thing I would do different is In the pic, I show the BOD-8’s plugged into the Tower-LCC; instead I would mount those separately with a 10-conductor cable jumper between. Power comes from the breakers in the lower right, up to the TBs in the upper right.  Then from the TBs, pairs of wire go out to the blocks.  One wire on the wire pair goes through CT (barely visible in the upper center of the photo).  The only work under the layout is wher