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Each blue track section represents a separate block. The blocks on the main line or the
branch line between “Southtown” and “Northville” can be subdivided any further into
more blocks if each of these blocks is long enough to store the longest train. This is useful
if you want more than one train to travel on these tracks at the same time.
102
The Main Block Diagram
Like a human operator must know the overall structure of the model railroad layout the
Visual Dispatcher needs to know this, too. This structure is represented by a diagram
that contains blocks as well as the routes and track connections (links) between blocks.
If there are turnouts to be thrown in order to let a train run from one block to an adjacent
block, then the blocks must be connected by appropriate routes (see section 2.6,
“Routes”). This diagram is called main block diagram of the layout. This diagram describes
the track layout of your entire model railroad in rough outline.
The block diagram can be drawn by yourself or automatically created by the software.
The latter is especially useful for small and medium size layouts, where the track plan
of the entire layout fits into one single switchboard. For this sample layout we decide to
let the software calculate the block diagram. Additional hints for manual creation of the
block diagram are given in Part III of this Users Guide, Chapter 13, “ The Visual Dispatcher
II”.
TrainController uses the track diagram of the switchboard, that is contained in the
main window of the software, as base of calculation of the block diagram. For this purpose
it is necessary to specify the positions of the blocks in this track diagram. This is
done with the help of so called traffic boxes. Each traffic box represents a block in the
track diagram of the switchboard. For each block determined in Diagram 78 a traffic
box is created and added to the switchboard in Diagram 77. The result is displayed in
the following diagram: