Model Railroad for JavaOne

My husband invited a group of fellow model railroad enthusiasts
(aka “train nuts”) down to our San Jose home yesterday to build
a small, portable, HO-scale model rail line to demonstrate JMRI
software at next week’s
JavaOne Conference.

JMRI
model railroad interface software controls model trains
and layout accessories such as turnouts or switches, animation,
locomotive speed and direction, and sound. Bob and John and Jon have
been working on JMRI open source with several hundred people all over
the world for many years. John has also been creating open source
model train circuit boards
to interface with JMRI. Yesterday’s group was made up of
those who were available to come to San Jose.

From about ten years’ experience observing and participating in this
obsession (ahem, that is, hobby), model railroaders usually focus on one
of three major categories of passion:

• Modelling (the scenery, houses, equipment casings, etc.)
• Operations (running trains on a model layout with timing and
  behavior as much as possible like a real or “prototype” railroad)

• Computers (the hardware and software that run the trains and the layout)

Yesterday’s group (John, Bob, Jon, and Bob’s son Bear) are definitely
computer-focussed. I think they will
probably get around to adding some ballast, grass, and maybe a tree or
two, but the fun is in the equipment itself. John got the wooden frame
ready in advance. He and the rest worked for about 5 hours yesterday
and left off when they could run a model engine around the loop without
incident.

Yesterday was a bright warm day and the favored task was
anything that involved laying on the warm asphalt of the driveway
in the shade of the layout itself. The first job was to paint the silver
coating of the layout base so it would not blind the workers…

Preparing the frame in advance:	Bear painting the basecoat:
Jon painting:	Bob starting to lay track:
Outer track loop in place:	Moving the layout into the shade:
John soldering track feeds:	Bob and Jon laying track:
Working on the wiring (in the shade):	Jon gluing track:
John observing the new layout:	Wires under the layout (with me gardening in the background):
It takes at least 3 hands to put a Tortoise ™ slow motion switch in place:	Bob under the layout:
Bear enjoying the sound chip and the train controller:	Jon waiting for the glue to dry:
Done for today:	Clean up:

We meet again in a few days to finish up (and maybe add a little bit
of scenery). Next weekend, we will take the little layout to the Moscone
center for installation in preparation for
JavaOne.

Images by John Plocher (Copyright 2006)