Is Railroad and Co. worth using? That’s a question that has come to the forefront of my mind in the last 24 hours. I’ve used JMRI decoderpro and Panelpro for some time, mainly because these are open source, well supported, constantly upgraded and best of all, free.
My computers also don’t (at least until very recently) use windows, I’m a mac and Linux person. JMRI supports all 3 platforms. All the other DCC control packages Ive seen seem to be windows based. I also use open source software extensively, and have begun to look quite critically at the functionality offered by many commercial packages, whether these be for music, image editing & cataloging,or office tasks. The only commercial package I have on my mac is MS office, not out of choice, but because I’m required to have it for business purposes. My linux machines have no commercial software whatsoever and can do just about any task I wish. This makes me critical of many bits of windows software where I’m asked to pay good money for relatively little. The Hornby software is a case in point, as it is incapable of doing just about anything I use JMRI for at the moment. Dont get me wrong, I’m happy to pay if the product were to offer rich functionality (and I consider it reasonable to donate to open source projects), but I’m not going to pay for what is essentially heavy marketing of some glitzy gimmicks.
Recently, for business reasons I needed to acquire a windows laptop. For the first time in years I have a windows machine that isn’t locked down by the corporate IT department and I can load my own software. Fortunately most of my favourite open source packages (Gimp, inkscape, VLC, etc) have now developed windows versions and are all loaded.
Ive started looking at some of the other railway packages around, and having dismissed most of them as expensive and low functionality, I’m now looking at Railroad and Co for my DCC needs, initially it looked expensive and difficult to get under the bonnet to see what it did without buying the product. Ive now downloaded some manuals and so far it looks interesting. There are stacks of questions in my mind right now. far too many to list here, and there doesn’t seem to be any good plain simple advice about in the web searches Ive made so far. It looks like I’m on my own in a journey of discovery.
The layout will soon get rewired with block detection, and I need to decide pretty quickly which software will link to it. I’ve already set up some stuff in JMRI Panelpro ready to use, so I’ve got a good idea what I want to do. I’m going to try to replicate this in Railroad & Co id the demo version will allow me to and then make a decision. To help others I’ll document progress in the blog.
Hi Kevin,
Great, you’ve seen the download/free trial, and also found the manuals to download, so at least now you can get an idea of the potential of RR&Co.
Where RR&Co gets really exciting in my view, is in it’s ability to add an infinite number of macros to define the operation of the various elements on the layout. By this I mean that blocks; signals; points; locomotives and schedules (a route from A to B ), can all be made to trigger or respond to certain events. Imagine this simple scenario:
The 3.30pm local passenger service from Station A to Station B, has to pass a junction protected by a home signal. The local left Station A at 3.30pm, automatically started by RR&Co as per the time of the clock in RR&Co. Before it starts, the sound of passenger carriage doors are heard to slam, the starter signal slowly comes off, then the guard whistles the right away, followed by a short loco whistle in response from the loco. The train then slowly gets under way with a very gentle prototypical start (inertia programmed into chip), drain cocks open before the exhaust beat takes over a few moments later.
At the junction, the signalman has let a mineral goods out of the branch (driven by you under manual control) in front of the local passenger, and it now occupies the block in advance of the local passenger. The junction signal remains on, and the passenger gently coasts to a stand (no exhaust beat and gentle squeal of brakes) at the signal, finally giving a short whistle to let the signalman know he’s there. You continue to have the road with your mineral (according to signals automatically pulled off by RR&Co because the blocks in advance of you are clear), and you happily plod along at a scale 25mph with your load of heavy wagons.
Once you have cleared the block section in advance of the passenger still held at the junction (including your brake van which triggers block detection due to the tail lamp pick up via the wheels), the home signal is slowly pulled off (servo activated and set to v slow operation), the loco gives another short whistle to acknowledge the signal, and again pulls slowly away with drain cocks open due to the length of its stand, all of this being under the control of RR&Co.
Clearly, there were many macros behind all the various operations above, but it gives some idea of the potential etc. I’m planning a large layout with return loops so trains go to and return from real places, but at the moment, I have a double track main line ‘test track’ (plus branch, main line stations, lay byes etc), to enable me to increase my understanding of RR&Co and what it can do before sarting this much larger project.
Anyway, I hope the above has been helpful or at least interesting.
Best wishes
Mike
Ps – Forgot to mention, but you can download any of the 3 version and their respective manuals for free as part of the 28 day trial.
Manuals at bottom of page hear: http://www.freiwald….roller_gold.htm
Pps – I’ve no axe to grind re using TC, I’m just very impressed with it in meeting the aim of prototypical operation of a railway.