RFID for monitoring hidden sidings

[Colin_McLeod]

There is an article in the January Model Railroader about using RFID sensors to keep track of individual freight wagons.  I am interested in considering the concept to keep a note of what train is in which hidden siding. Does anyone know whether there is any way that one can link the sensor with the route setting  to tell the reader which siding the train is heading for, or will it be necessary to have a reader for every siding?

 

I am using DCC and may get Railroad software in due course.

[96701]

My brain hurts trying to think about this.

 

DCC doesn't normally feed any information back, but can predict where things are going. I've had a play with Rocrail and MERG stuff, and son and heir built some current sensors. The software expects that you tell it where your loco is at start up, set a route for said loco through the various sections, the current sensors see current flow, so the software logically assumes that a loco leaving one section moves into the adjacent section, so no need for lineside sensors, RFID or otherwise.

 

The concept that you are thinking of doesn't use "track circuits", but uses lineside sensors, therefore logically you need to be able to read the passage of a loco that carries a unique tag into any road. One of the problems with trying this is that a sensor on No 1 road might read a tag that is going into No 2 road unless they are very finely tuned.