[NTLK] Serial-Out for Trains?

[Anthony Velasco]

Hello Steve - 

My uncle, Dr. Thomas S. Catherall (deceased), was a professor in the Recreation Department at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He also was the (or "a") U.S. representative for Marklin Model Railways, and published regularly in their newsletter, which may still be available. Much of his work centered around the use of digital controls for model trains, and he used these to study cooperative play and interactive learning while teaching computer skills.  I remember seeing some of his set-ups in his lab where he was using an Apple II for programming the controls. He even built a larger scale system in a city park in Springville, UT with a sizable grant he received. 

Here are a couple of links that I found to some of his publications and a patent that has many of his Marklin newsletter publications listed in the Lit. Cit.  

Good luck, Steve and HTH!  


https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/036013159090005R  
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1991-11053-001
https://patents.google.com/patent/US7904215B2/en  

Anthony (Tony) Velasco

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Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2019 00:34:10 -0400
From: Steve Craft <craft.steve at gmail.com>
To: newtontalk at newtontalk.net
Subject: [NTLK] Serial-Out for Trains?


Hey all. An uncle gave a full old-school train set to me (my kids) and I was thinking that it might be fun to control the track switching and other things in the set from an eMate. Can anyone recommend a way to use the serial port (or anything else) to send a signal from the eMate to something outbound? Of course there is also the software side of things...

All ideas appreciated. At first I thought I might do this with an Apple II, but this will be even more fun. 


Thanks!