I have mentioned, a few times, that I have created a "small" portable-ish layout to use a my testing / programming layout. It is, simply, a 3'x5' board with an oval of Unitrack, with a siding leg that isolates to a programming track. Finally got a lot of my "finishing" aspects done on it, so thought I would share a few photos. Here's a wide view, showing the primary operating area. You can see the programming siding, along with the stand alone decoder tester which is also connected the inputs to the programming track. There is space for the old laptop which runs both JMRI/Decoder Pro as well as the ESU LokProgramming software I have two toggles, which can switch the programming track between the three main main inputs -- the command station (my old Digitrax Zephyr), the LokProgrammer and a Digitrax PR3. The LEDs on the right switch to show what is selected by the toggles, and there is also a green LED which comes on when the main oval has track power. There is third toggle, which allows me to select whether the command station feed to the programming track is from the Zephyr's Operations or Programming outputs (and the top LED is bi-color) I have the ESU decoder tester, as well. By bringing up the connection to the programming track, I can test decoders outside the locos. This photo shows the PR3 and LokProgrammer behind the laptop, as well as the input harness for the wires coming from the Zephyr. The third toggle is to the right of the harness plug (which are Anderson PowerPoles). And my old latop, with DecoderPro open . It is about 11 years old, runs Win XP, and has been dedicated to just decoder programming support for about 5 years, but now has a clean location to sit, rather than banging around underneath the JACALAR Still a few more refinements I want to make, such as adding a USB hub so I can have everything plugged into the PC at once.
Nice work! I built a similar loop track about the same size, only with some leftover Atlas snap-track. I don't have it wired as nicely for programming and such, nor is it "finished" as nicely, but I did wire it for 16 blocks of detection and 4 transponding zones with a BDL168. I used it to demo stuff at my daughter's school, and I still have it handy for breaking in new locos when needed. That's a valuable tool you've built there.
I have built a circle of snap track that I use to speed match my locomotives (by manual timing how long the loco takes to go around the loop) and (someday) will install a photo sensor on it. The plan is to modify JMRI so that all I need to do is put a locomotive on the loop, program the engine number and then it will run the locomotive to break it in and finally speed match the engine so all my engines are speed matched for the same starting and top speed...someday.
Our N-TRAK club has built two speed matching layouts that use a JMRI Speed Matching script. The details can be found on the following document: https://nrmrc.org/sites/default/files/publications//dcc_locomotive_speed_matching.pdf
