Dave Stewart's A&O Dispatcher's Panel

I attended Rock Ops in 2022 and visited Dave Stewart's O-scale Appalachian and Ohio railroad. His dispatcher's panel was beautifully constructed and I asked him numerous questions about it. He referred me to Bob Sobol. Bob was incredibly helpful and his insight into the construction of Dave's dispatch panel was invaluable.

Bob give my insight to how he setup the electronics behind Dave's dispatcher's panel and I did something similar.  Dave's layout uses a modified version of Bruce Chubb's CMRI system for block detection and signalling. I chose to use Digitrax's Loconet and RRCirkits for signalling and block detection. This required a different interface than Dave's layout electronics. 

I designed two circuit boards to simplify the amount of wires within the panel. 

The white board is designed to handle one "OS point". This includes the turnout control, signal control and the 5 LED's to indicate turnout position and signal indication. Additionally, It has a passthru to connect 5 block detector indication LED's. These are the block indicators which show where the train is on the panel. 

The black Circuit board is designed to handle turnouts and/or turnout lockouts only. it doesn't provide control of signals. 

Ultimately both circuit boards connect to a RR-Cirkits TowerControllwer Mark II. This board is a 64-line Input/Outplut device used to translate phyical commands into Loconet packets.