2007 layout
February 2009 for some time the display was
corrupted if I attempted to run the software on my widescreen laptop.
After some investigation I found that the graph-unit of Free Pascal had
problems writing lines at at angle at certain sectors of the screen.
When the window was resized the missing lines would appear out of
nowhere. Straight lines and solid bars could be drawn anywhere without
problems. Also the procedure outtextxy() could write characters
everywhere on the screen as opposed to putting single pixels there. In
the end I wrote a new procedure drawing lines at an angle of 0, 45 or
90 degrees by writing a succession of smal dot characters. The new
procedure is significantly slower than the old one, so an extra feature
was added updating only those parts of the screen where changes have
been made since last write.
July 2008: I added a box to give local control of the points at one
of the stations. The box is locked until it is released by the
signalman in the control centre. The shunting staff will the set the
points locally for their shunting movements. When shunting is complete
the shunting staff must telephone the signalman, who will restore the
box to it's normal ie locked position.
December 18th the catenary reached track 1 of the other terminus. By
new year all tracks had caternary but two, which were completed just
before Easter 2008.
The layout is now completed as such. Buildings and scenery will be
added during the summer. I will glue the new houses in the garden
avoiding the toxic fumes.
I want to repeat I never mix 16 kV and 25 kV locomotives on the layout
at the same time. Tho photographs are recorded at different occations.
I would like to mention only the signals and points (switches) are
computer controlled. The locomotives are controlled manually with an
array of control 80 and 80f's.
I am writing the software in Free Pascal and it should compile into
Linux or Windows. The current version of Linux does not support libvga
making the program windows-only.
Track sections, points and routes are edited in 3 text-files read by the programme.
I've put all my sourcefiles on my homepage for 2 very good reasons :- Although
you can't use my software to control our own layout, I´d like to
invite you to use bits and pieces that you may find usefull.
- To keep an out of the house back up copy as an extra security.
Pictlinx ver 3.1 with slideshow - www.hjelmenet.dk/software - 20090305 00:36
