Well, as of this week I have been job-hunting for three years since being laid off. I’ve kept at it, but ageism is rampant in technology. Anyone who didn’t want a 57 year-old with tech skills back then sure as hell doesn’t want a 60 year-old with tech skills now. I’m not really free to move out of SE Michigan for the fourteen or so more years I’d like to continue working, so I figure I’ll just have to take on some other kind of work.
END OF RANT
On the other hand, I have been having a great time this week with LCC since I dug out my TCS LT-50 command station and started playing with it. I definitely have one from the first batch, serial number 13(!). Before I started anything, though, I updated my copy of JMRI to be current with the most recent test release. I was nine revisions behind on my laptop.
I’m thinking that the TCS LT-50 will be all the command station I need for a four-person layout. Keeping its tethered throttle plugged in (to act as a command station), with the three others I already have, I’m really only one radio throttle short. I’d love to be able to entertain a 12-person session, but cannot figure out how I’d fit that many people plus a layout into my 20 by 25 foot space.
By doing all of my planning based on an LCC system, I skip the proprietary systems that Digitrax and NCE have for their own buss networks; I’m basically not designing in 30 years of technical debt by instead designing around an open standard supported by multiple vendors.
I set up a temporary installation on the floor and updated the TCS LT-50 from the version 1.0 software it was running to the current version, 2.2.1, on the TCS web site. That was quick and easy, so I hooked it up to a Logic Rail Technologies LCC Fast-clock. The LT-50 does not have a built-in fast clock, but the Logic Rail Technologies unit gives me a digital display, plus can store programmable events that it can send across the CANBus network of CAT5 cable that connects the components. It doesn’t do much yet, but I have plans. I’d like to have signaling, and the Pere Marquette used semaphores in my era.
When I have time again, I will pull out the LT-50, the LCC Fast-clock, a wi-fi base station and a few other pieces I have acquired over the years and test them out a bit more. Then the fun really begins!
-fm