I volunteer at a train, trolley, and subway museum, including working on restoration of full-sized rail vehicles and maintaining railway infrastructure. As a non-authoritative, hobby project combining my love of trains, electronics, mapping, and data, I am building a LiDAR scanner to create a 3D map of the museum, automatically identify tracks and overhead wire, and compute wire height and track gauge.

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GSM-R is the latest secure way for UK train drivers to communicate with signallers (dispatchers) and other drivers. Modern UK trains have a Driver’s Control Panel (DCP) with a display and buttons, but to date, very few simulator builders have succeeded at integrating a functional GSM-R DCP into their simulators. Here’s how I managed it.

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With the center console of my train simulator built, I rapidly modeled and fabricated prototypes of the four other panels.

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With the center console of my train simulator built, I rapidly modeled and fabricated prototypes of the four other panels.

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After a cardboard prototype of the center console of my Class 80x simulator, I created a functional hardboard version and took it for a spin.

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TPWS is a key safety system in UK trains, so my Class 80x cab needed a precisely replicated TPWS control panel.

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My cardboard prototype of the central portion of a Class 80x dashboard allowed me to iterate to a laser-cut hardboard prototype.

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After sourcing rough measurements of the dashboard of a Class 80x train, I began creating a cardboard prototype, plus associated CAD designs to get the design fabricated.

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My several iterations over a CAN bus controller for my Train Simulator physical dashboard has made it simple to add new controls. Here’s how I used it plus a joystick to add UK horn control to my virtual train.

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In my ongoing quest to build a physical cab dashboard to control Train Simulator, an important set of components are the gauges that tell me what’s going on with the train. As I build the dashboard into which to embed my gauges, I realized I needed to better modularize my air pressure gauge, moving the control circuit board outside the gauge. Here’s how I did it.

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Having sporadically built controls and gauges to interface with Train Simulator over the course of a year, in April 2024 I began to figure out how to design the dashboard they would all fit into.

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