Monthly Update: June 2025
We have decided to start publishing a monthly update on the website, also shared to our Facebook Page. Please follow the page for regular news, and shortly we will be making our user group public in anticipation for the oSB simulator release. Read on for the latest update, including the first deployment of the simulator code at Sleaford East!
So yes, the big story is that Sleaford East has deployed the first real instance of the simulator code. This is running our Macro module and Interface module, which allows users complete freedom to drag and drop an ordered list of actions to form the logic of the simulation. Hence this supports time delay based train movements, with track circuits manually dropped and picked. The user can make these macros as elaborate as they like, and are encouraged to reuse useful macros inside others - there will be a full guide and tutorial videos when publicly released. This has been tested at Sleaford since February and is going very well. The relay IO boards recommended on our website have had no failures, and the PC was “upgraded” to a sub-£100 Raspberry Pi 5 single board computer which runs very fast and starts the software in seconds. The photo below shows the Sleaford East simulator cupboard with the computer circled in red.
Below is a video of a loco run round at Sleaford East, all programmed by Alistair (a self-confessed non-computer person!). Timings are shortened for testing, but openSignalBox operates the track circuit relays, block instruments and lever locks in this example. Bells will be fully working shortly.
Everybody knows that railways run on tea, so we have found some excellent mugs, in appropriate colours, for our development team to stay refreshed. Send us an email if you would like one and we can arrange one to reach you. Also, we have received a request from the West Somerset Railway, a fantastic heritage line in the South West, for some of our replacement diagram indicator designs to upgrade their working signal boxes. They have been testing them since last year and are happy with the results. The 3D files can be found here. Below you can see the mugs and a selection of the printed indicators ready for LEDs and resistors to be fitted.
Finally, the month ahead will be focused on refactoring the Interface module to add support for the block bell interface, for which the firmware (the code that runs on the device) was completed last month. The firmware supports advanced features such as sending and receiving both codes and times (to allow for point-to-point links that accurately replay human timings), random timings for automatically rung bells (with parameters tunable by the user, and personalities allocated to each of the four blocks), and also a “hint” feature, suggested by David Moore, which allows the software to suggest the code it expects to receive and reduces the delay for parsing the next code. Perhaps the most important benefit of the hint feature is that it supports replying to a 2-1 train out of section and immediately offering a new train (i.e. effectively 2-1-3-1). The hint feature will match the 2-1 and immediately reset and parse the 3-1 as a separate code. There is envisaged some rare occasions where this feature may cause problems, so it can be disabled if not required. On the horizon is also the train planning module, which contains traction allocations and timetabling. This can then talk to the Macro module to trigger trains entering and receive timing information back. So watch out for July’s update as it should prove to be an exciting one!