Making a Signalbox Diagram using a computer

[ejstubbs]

7 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Thanks but the two examples you posted aren't there

 

There is a much older "show us your control panels" thread here:

 

 

It contains at least one of the control panel photos referenced by the OP (here) so I assume that's the one he meant.

 

Perhaps the old and new threads should be combined in order to avoid unnecessary duplication.  (Mods, are you listening?)

[Peter749]

15 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Thanks but the two examples you posted aren't there, hence my question.

Sorry - I was doing it quickly by searching and another thread of the same name has been created

I knew it existed as my pictures are on page 6

 

Peter

 

EDIT - somebody beat me to a reply.

Edited September 17, 2021 by Peter749
new info

[Michael Hodgson]

6 hours ago, Harlequin said:

Hi Peter,

 

I think you need a drawing program, like Xara Designer, Affinity Designer or Adobe Illustrator.

 

When combined with knowledge of the prototype diagrams and input from signalling experts it’s possible to make something reasonably authentic like this:

 

(Created for @Andy Keane’s Helston)

 

A signal box diagram is a slightly different beast from a mimic diagram, so you need to be clear which you are actually going for, but a drawing program is the most flexible way to make either.

If you want to draw something like this, it is useful to have a library of signal drawings to cut and paste onto a line drawing.

Somewhere on this machine I have something (copyright) which I think I got from an Iain Logan living in the Lowlands.  It was years ago and I don't know if he's still doing it.

 

His site had come to my attention through a brilliant little animated display that he had produced entirely using fonts, showing how to cross two trains that are both too big for a passing loop

[Peter749]

The problem for me with the various graphics programs is the learning curve to use them and at 65 and a bit I find some of this stuff difficult

One of the reasons my Point and Signal control will be DC leaving the DCC to run the trains

Edited September 17, 2021 by Peter749

[spamcan61]

1 hour ago, Peter749 said:

 

When I copy a black line across and place it in either Word or Excel and I try to shorten or lengthen it the line makes a step in the middle.

 

Ah yes, tried that and it does the same for me, however if I shorten the line by holding down the shift key and then using the keyboard left and right arrows to change the length it stays horizontal - in Word 365 at least.

[Michael Hodgson]

Word and Excel are not drawing programs.  One is a word processor, the other a spreadsheet.

Just don't try using Microsoft Paint.

 

Use one of the drawing packages others have mentioned, a free one if necessary for financial reasons and you only want one or two panels, but a professional package if you're going to be doing lots of them.  Unfortunately as Peter749 says they do all have a learning curve, and for some it's a lot more than others.

[spamcan61]

4 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Word and Excel are not drawing programs.  One is a word processor, the other a spreadsheet.

Just don't try using Microsoft Paint.

 

Use one of the drawing packages others have mentioned, a free one if necessary for financial reasons and you only want one or two panels, but a professional package if you're going to be doing lots of them.  Unfortunately as Peter749 says they do all have a learning curve, and for some it's a lot more than others.

I'd say the 'correct' package depends on two factors:-

 

What kind of output is the OP aiming at?

 - If it's a simple 'mimic diagram' then Office tools will do fine, as I've shown. If it's a work of art like the 'Helston' or 'Thuxton'  diagrams then a drawing or possibly vector graphic application would be better.

 

How much time and possibly money is the OP prepared to put into learning to use a new application? 

- like many people I know, I often use a "If all you've got's a hammer, everything looks like a nail" approach. A tool I already have  might well do the job to an acceptable standard, even if it isn't the "best" tool. Doing building floor plans in Excel is the kind of thing I'm on about. OK I also know people who do Gantt charts in Excel, when they have access to Project, and that is bonkers IMHO. 

[Peter749]

Somebody suggested Gimp as a program and another person suggested Delta Cad which will run for 45 days before I need to purchase it

https://deltacad.com/demo.html

 

[Peter749]

2 minutes ago, spamcan61 said:

I'd say the 'correct' package depends on two factors:-

 

What kind of output is the OP aiming at?

 - If it's a simple 'mimic diagram' then Office tools will do fine, as I've shown.

 

How much time and possibly money is the OP prepared to put into learning to use a new application? 

 

I would be after a very simple diagram

 

It is not going to have any signals on it for now as the railway does not have any - so far.

Keeping the track plan separate from the point switches make it easier to change

 

I'm going to use Peco Point switches, PL-26B, along with Peco Point motors

 

The low level fiddle yard has Fleischmann point switches on a simple Excel diagram

 

 

 

[KingEdwardII]

13 minutes ago, Peter749 said:

Somebody suggested Gimp

Gimp is a great tool, but it is designed for editing photos/images and that is what it is best at doing, rather than drawing diagrams from scratch.

 

Of the Office tools, Powerpoint is the best drawing tool by far.

 

If you need something free, that can be installed on most operating systems, try LibreOffice. It has a Drawing tool that is as good as Powerpoint. I've been using it to draw diagrams of a couple of bathrooms that we are in the process of remodelling!

 

Yours,  Mike.

[PaulRhB]

35 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Word and Excel are not drawing programs.  One is a word processor, the other a spreadsheet.

But if you have it already perfectly capable of doing it. I’ve done control panels based on Signalbox diagrams in WORD  for several friends who have worked with the full size ones in boxes. 

 

35 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Just don't try using Microsoft Paint.

The later versions are actually quite versatile for simple drawings of signals for this. 
 

Both these were done in WORD for friends layouts. 

 

 

Edited September 17, 2021 by PaulRhB

[micknich2003]

8 hours ago, KingEdwardII said:

Gimp is a great tool, but it is designed for editing photos/images and that is what it is best at doing, rather than drawing diagrams from scratch.

 

Of the Office tools, Powerpoint is the best drawing tool by far.

 

If you need something free, that can be installed on most operating systems, try LibreOffice. It has a Drawing tool that is as good as Powerpoint. I've been using it to draw diagrams of a couple of bathrooms that we are in the process of remodelling!

 

Yours,  Mike.

Dear Mike, can you please tell me more about using Libre Office to produce drawings? I'm looking for an easy to use program where I can "Cut and Paste" from the likes of the attached and make a completely different layout. Many Thanks, Mick.

[Jeremy Cumberland]

33 minutes ago, micknich2003 said:

Dear Mike, can you please tell me more about using Libre Office to produce drawings? I'm looking for an easy to use program where I can "Cut and Paste" from the likes of the attached and make a completely different layout. Many Thanks, Mick.

 

Office-style programs aren't that clever, and you won't be able to produce anything like these drawings in them.

 

You can essentially use three types of object:

1. Images. You could, for example, snip that nice bracket signal 45, 46, 47 from Alexandra Dock, but you can only snip it as a rectangle. You would probably then want to remove the extraneous text and background colour, and by the time you have done that, you may as well have created it from scratch. The fancy post would be rather tricky to create, but the signal arms are simple rectangles. By all means use images, but unless you can match background colours, they are likely to stand out rather oddly.
2. Lines. These are the simplest objects to use, and they come in a varying types including straight, arcs, arrows and freeform curves. You can make them any colour you like, and almost any thickness, but they don't have a separate outline and fill. BluenGreyAnorak's drawing in the third post in this thread and Spamcan61's a few posts later appear to use lines (and ovals/ellipses for the dots).
3. Solids. These have separate outline and fill colours (which can be transparent). A reasonable range of shapes are available, including rectangles, parallelograms solid arrows and solid arcs (solid arcs are very difficult to use). You can place one object on top of another, and I suspect this is how PaulRhB created his rather nice disc signals in the Lulworth Castle diagram, using a transparent oval with a thick black outline over the top of a rectangle with red fill and a thin black outline. This is about as fancy as you can get using office tools, but there is a freeform straight-line solid which does allow you to create things like distant signals.

If you download OfficeLibre and take a look at Impress (OfficeLibre's version of PowerPoint), you will find the shapes in the Insert menu. Play around, but you will probably find it very frustrating to start with. As I say, you won't be able to create anything like Alexandra Dock, but you could, with a bit of patience, create something like Lulworth Castle.

 

10 hours ago, PaulRhB said:

 

Okay Paul, how did you do that yellow crossover on the right? Is it a yellow curved line overlaid on a thicker black line? It's remarkably well done for Word.

[PaulRhB]

1 hour ago, Jeremy C said:

Is it a yellow curved line overlaid on a thicker black line? It's remarkably well done for Word.

Yes, I do them at several times full size then reduce them down by taking a screenshot and cropping it. Bit like the old way of creating etch artwork several times larger to reduce distortion. 

[Harlequin]

6 hours ago, micknich2003 said:

Dear Mike, can you please tell me more about using Libre Office to produce drawings? I'm looking for an easy to use program where I can "Cut and Paste" from the likes of the attached and make a completely different layout. Many Thanks, Mick.

Hi Mick,

You can snip parts out of an image but the parts will then be bitmap, possibly with small marks on them and with an edge that needs to be disguised. So my technique, which should also work in LibreOffice, is to draw new versions of the symbols and then copy and paste them around the drawing as needed. That way they are clean and because they are drawings, not bits of an image, can be adapted as needed.

 

That’s how I created the Helston drawing, above.

 

Also in that drawing, the tracks are drawn using a “brush” to simulate the ink/pencil borders and the watercolour fill of the real thing. That means that they are easy to draw and easy to adjust. That is something that you need a dedicated drawing program to achieve.

[KingEdwardII]

8 hours ago, micknich2003 said:

can you please tell me more about using Libre Office to produce drawings

Hmm - starting from scratch, that will take a while! I've been using versions of LibreOffice for 15+ years and I've probably forgotten how much I've learned!

 

I'll start out by saying that something like the Burleigh Street Cabin should not be so hard, but the Alexandra Dock example looks very complex, especially the multiple intersecting sweeping curves.

 

You can't realistically "cut and paste" from a picture such as those - those are bitmap pictures and taking pieces and placing them into a new diagram will be very hard - basically you can't change the shapes of pieces of a bitmap, which is what you would need to do. I would approach the problem in Draw (that's the component of LibreOffice that you use for drawings) by creating some basic elements and then combine those into a diagram. Draw diagrams are essentially "vector diagrams" based on lines and areas, which can very easily be modified in size, shape, colour, etc, - very different from a bitmap picture.

 

So, to attempt something like Burleigh Street Cabin, I'd envisage doing the tracks as a form of line - some straight, some curved. I'd create elements for signals out of a grouped set of lines and coloured areas. Same for the black rectangles for turnouts. These elements can then be cut and paste into the diagram where required.

 

In a sense, you'd be building a set of drawing elements to create such diagrams - there would be up-front work to create these elements before you start to draw the diagrams. Some of the tricky stuff is creating the double curved elements like the representations of crossovers.

 

The help document for Draw is here:

 

https://documentation.libreoffice.org/assets/Uploads/Documentation/en/DG4.3/DG43-DrawGuide.pdf

 

...but that's like climbing the Matterhorn, since it contains everything!

 

As with any new tool, it is better to start simple and learn to to simple things and work out from there.

 

Here's a plan I created earlier this week for one of the bathrooms that we're remodelling - not in any way the same as a signalbox diagram, but it can give an idea of what Draw can be used to produce in a short timescale:

 

Top_Bathroom_Plan_3.pdf

 

Yours, Mike.

[Harlequin]

Half an hour's work in a drawing program:

Just the tracks and the signals.

 

Edited April 12, 2022 by Harlequin

[micknich2003]

Many thanks for the reply's, appreciated, Mick.

[Dave-5-5-7]

My diagram represents a fairly modern (1980s/1990s) layout diagram for a combined diagram and control panel using IFS. 

 

I have used MSPaint. 

[t-b-g]

Last time I did one I went "old school" and used paper, pencils, a rule and some coloured felt pens.

 

 

The diagrams on Buckingham are hand drawn and rather lovely. I attach the Denny original for Leighton Buzzard.

 

 

Sometimes I think we go a bit overboard with the technology side of things and just look for ways of using a computer when something done "the old way" has a charm that the precision of computer drawing somehow doesn't have.

 

I am pretty sure the original signal box diagrams, at least in the "old days" would have been hand drawn.

[Michael Hodgson]

1 hour ago, t-b-g said:

I am pretty sure the original signal box diagrams, at least in the "old days" would have been hand drawn.

Indeed, but most of us lack the skills of trained draughtsmen. Like all skilled trades their workmanship was a beauty to behold.

The companies all had their own house style, and modellers often try to replicate this.

Even NX panels and current screen based signalling systems follow certain styles, as seen in some of the postings above.

 

Since I can't draw a straight line with the aid of a ruler,  software should give me more presentable results.

[KingEdwardII]

2 hours ago, t-b-g said:

"old school" and used paper, pencils, a rule and some coloured felt pens.

It's very good what you achieved with those.  However, the main drawback with physical drawings like that is that it is usually very hard to make any changes once you've applied pen to paper. Either to deal with a mistake or to handle future changes. That is where the computer drawing programs really score - editing is straightforward.

 

Yours,  Mike.

[t-b-g]

Alterations!

 

 

I just like things that are hand crafted. I don't expect for one moment that everybody should be the same. Sometimes, to my eyes, the perfection achieved by the use of modern technology is just a little too crisp and clinical.

 

I have done some diagrams myself using the drawing facility in "Word" but I get more pleasure from my hand drawn ones.

 

It is a bit like the difference between an old hand drawn GA of a loco and one done in CAD. One has the precision and accuracy but is a bit clinical, the other has charm and character.

[t-b-g]

18 minutes ago, KingEdwardII said:

It's very good what you achieved with those.  However, the main drawback with physical drawings like that is that it is usually very hard to make any changes once you've applied pen to paper. Either to deal with a mistake or to handle future changes. That is where the computer drawing programs really score - editing is straightforward.

 

Yours,  Mike.

 

I drew the one for my layout after the layout was built, so I was sure what the track layout would be. I had forgotten and should have mentioned that the Leighton Buzzard diagram was altered by me, digitally! There was a crossover, which was removed from the RH end of the layout by Peter Denny but he never got around to altering the diagram. So I scanned the original and digitally removed the crossover. Once the crossover had gone, one of the signals, No. 3, was in the wrong place so I moved the signal on the layout and again, cut and pasted the signal on the drawing to its new location.

 

I am not against technology but I prefer to use it to enhance hand drawn diagrams rather than instead of them.

[Michael Hodgson]

3 hours ago, t-b-g said:

Alterations!

On the prototype it's quite common to find alterations to Signalbox Diagrams rather than redrawing from scratch.  This might be done properly in the drawing office by scraping off the old and redrawing the new.  But in more recent times although Snopake wasn't common, removed items are simply covered with blank paper, new items and changes are properly drawn onto little bits of paper which are then stuck over the original diagram, and a few more numbers are added onto the end of the list of spares (if there is one on the diagram).  These labels often come unstuck and the result can be a bit of a mess, but at least you can often work out what used to be there.  Sometimes you can also explore history by unscrewing an ivorine or Traffolite lever plate and turning it over - a simple expedient for labelling a spare was to turn it over and use the blank face.  Sometimes however you found that a money conscious S&T had already engraved the other side for something else altogether!  A full resignalling would generally have enough budget to do a new drawing though.