Lighted passenger cars (for Gary)

[Woodie]

Gary,

I note in the DCC post you run lighted passenger cars. I have thought of a number of ways of doing this, however your advice would be appreciated.

I have completed the interiors of my passenger coaches (corridors, seats etc) and eventually want to light them. They sadly miss character on a dark layout, when other lighting effects (station, street, building etc) creates a fab look.

1. run power from the loco right through the set. however uncoupling would be compromised. If using DCC you can use one of the lighting functions to power the coaches. If running analgoue, of course the brightness will depend on the speed/power applied.

2. provide powered bogies for each coach. Have you done this? With DCC this would be fine because of the constant 12 V DC across the tracks, however the lights would be on all the time. Again, with analogue, the brightness would be dependant on the speed/ power.

3. (preferred) provide stationary decoders for DCC in each coach, with powered bogies. Allows individual coach lighting on/off, no probs with coupling, however would be pricy!!!

How have you lit your passenger coaches?

Any adice from anyone?

TOOT!

[This message has been edited by Woodie (edited 07-07-2001).]

 

[Gary Pfeil]

Hello Woodie, I have put metal wheelsets and wipers on my passenger cars, so yes, with DCC they stay on all the time. I have thought of putting the cheapest decoders available in them (about $15)but that does get very expensive when you are talking about 25 cars! I also thought of a reed switch mounted inside the car so that by passing a magnet by the car side, I could turn lights on and off, but I haven't pursued it. All the staging tracks on my layout have toggles to turn them on and off (don't need lights or sound in hidden staging)so thats how I turn the lights off when the train is not in use. One additional note: I have many Rivarossi cars, which came with seats installed and seemed like a great buy, not having to buy and install the seats. When I went to populate the cars (can't make money running empty trains!)I found that the seats are too close to the floor, I had to amputate the poor folks legs at the calf! And I model the era before the Americans with disabilities act! Hope this helps.

Gary

 

[Woodie]

Gary,

Thanks for that. I'll probably go the same way as you, with powered bogies.

TOOT!

 

[Gary Pfeil]

Thanks Dave, I'll try that next time.

Gary

 

[Woodie]

Yep.... I get the same problem, especially when replying to a post. It comes back with the "new" page and the reply is not included. "refresh" does not bring it up either. Sometimes does, sometimes not. Wait a minute or two and it's fine.

Dave, If Oracle or SQLServer is under the forum, can you check the "commit" setting in the admin? Make sure it is "commit on update" not periodical commit. (It may be "data synchronisation" or "rollback" sync or something like that).

The same thing can happen on commercial systems when the updated/new data is in the database "buffers/cache" but has not yet been "committed" to the database, due to "recovery settings" (in case of disk failure) being set as "time based" rather than "transaction based" (e.g. every 30 secs, write new data to the database). If this is the case, you will not see the new data for anything up to 30 secs, or whatever the time setting is.

When data is requested, to refresh a page of The Guage, it is reading from the hard drive, and the new data has not been written to the hard drive at that point, becuase it has not been "committed". (or snychronised).

Make sense?
ANother reason could be if The Guage is "mirrored" onto another server? and the load is "shared" between servers? Somtimes the "mirroring" can be a bit slow (mabe again set to every 30 secs et al), and your new screen comes from the "mirrored" server (because of load sharing), and has not yet had the updates copied across to it. "Mirrored
servers are used to keep the systems up at all times. If one server fails, the other automatically takes over.

The Guage (and other forums similar to this) build HTML dynamically, therefore when your browser compares date/time stamps of pages you have in your cache to pages on the webserver, it will always show as "page does not exist" (note the big long string of data sent when requesting a new thread/page/reply etc) It checks this COMPLETE string with what is in your cache, and what is at The Guage. They will never match. Therefore The Guage will give you a new page each and every time. This is eveidenced by watching the page build as it comes through the net. If it was in your cache, it appears instantly.

This comes from 10 years of computer industry work with the internet and internet systems, So I don't think it is a refresh problem, or a broswer setting problem. Another reason could be the posts go through some sort of "filter" for obscenities, inapproriate HTML sites referenced etc? This could also slow the system in updating the data, as the system will check each and every word, and look at HTML addresses to see if they are on a "banned" list. Does The Guage use such a facility?

TOOT!

Hope this isn't too much waffle, but experience tells me to look at these things when these type of problems occur. There may be nothing you can do about it, because the people that host the server may not be willing to change the settings. (as it will increase the load on the servers). If this is the case, then we will have to live with the problem.

 

[Woodie]

Oh.... as an added comfort. The Guage is not the only forum etc that functions in the way that has been described as a problem. Newgroups do it, and other chat/forums do it to. eg. your post does not appear on the list for 15 - 30 secs sometimes, even if you hit refresh. It is dependant on when the webserver writes the new data to the hard drive. This occurs on a "cache full" or "periodical setting". Server adminsitrator do not consider chat forums critical systems, in the way, say banks do, and if there is a failure, then they are prepared to lose the last 30 secs of so of data, just to reduce the load on the server. To set the database to "commit on each indiviual update instantly, does increase the load on a server quite considerably. Banks et al must operate this way, as they cannot "lose" the last 30 secs or so of money based transactions should there be a failure. eg. deposits/withdrawls through teller machines.

TOOT!

 

[Dave Hagan]

HI Woodie we don't use a "filter" for obscenities, nor do we have a banned word list which would delay new information been written. Like you said Woodie a new html file is dynamically created every time someone makes a post, so I don't understand why some people are seeing a problem and others are not. On my side I've never come across this problem, which makes it very difficult to resolve the issue.

On a side note, I've just received an e-mail from our web-host complaining about the amount of CPU usage The Gauge is using on their server. You might not think it by the number of posts, but hundreds of people visit The Gauge every day simply to read. They are also requesting we switch over to VBulletin which uses php with a mysql backend database. This is not really a problem as we were aware this issue was going to arise and have already begun testing new board software. VBulletin is good, although it looks like we might lose a few features that people have become accustomed to, i.e. spellchecker.

Cheers Woodie

Dave Hagan



[This message has been edited by Dave Hagan (edited 07-08-2001).]

 

[Gary Pfeil]

Can anyone out here tell me why I often cannot see the response which is made to my posts? Let me explain what I'm talking about. I made a post, above, and it was the first response to Woodie's question. I came back to the forum later, saw that there were now 2 responses, so I opened the thread to see the new response. I only see Woodie's original question and my response. This has happened several times. If I check later today, I will probably see the new response. Is there some kind of time lapse involved here or am I doing something wrong? Or not doing something right? I'm not very computer literate. Any suggestions?

Thanks, Gary

 

[Gary Pfeil]

I was able to see Woodie's response immediately after I posted my question. Strange.

Gary

 

[Dave Hagan]

Hi Gary, I think this is a "refresh" issue.

Whats happening is your browser is showing you the "cached" version of the page which it has stored on your computer. Clicking on the "refresh" button will solve the problem. Some other peope have reported this before and I think some of your browser options are not set correctly if its showing you an old cached page.

Anyone else still getting this problem??

Dave Hagan