Train automation using DCS

The 50-1039 is what you will need. It is the upgraded DCS system, basically a TIU (Track Interface Unit) and WIU (Wireless Interface Unit) in one. It will allow you to operate your PS2 & PS3 locos with the MTH app on your smart phone. The MTH DCS remote control will not work with this new TIU/WIU system. If you ever want to use an MTH remote, you will have to find a used TIU on the secondary market. You will also need the AIU 50-1004 to operate your switches. It will connect to the 50-1039 TIU/WIU.

A TIU and an AIU will allow you to do mostly everything you mentioned.

The jury is still out on the new TIU as it hasn’t been delivered yet. I expect it to work just as well as the older TIUs, save no physical remote control at the outset.  @MTH RD has said that a Wi-Fi remote may be in their future, but probably a ways out.

For now you would use an app on your tablet or smartphone.

In terms of full automation, like “trains never run into one another”, you’d probably need to add some sort of block detection and use relays to prevent crashes.  That said if you measure the route and time it correctly, the MTH DCS speed control is so good that it would probably take a year of running for the trains to get out of sync and hit each other.  

I’ve put two trains on the same oval and run them for hours without running into one another with the locomotives set at the same speed.

@Late Starter can you elaborate what you mean by automation?

For example, when you say "all routes can be run," does this mean automatically with switches changing by themselves so a train runs thru all the routes with no user action?

Yes that is what I was thinking.  My layout consists of two ovals with a figure eight inside of the smaller oval. The oval runs can be controlled with just two switches, easy to do manually.  But the figure eight has four additional switches which means that they have to be set at different times as the train passes by.  Fortunately if the switches are set incorrectly the train will not derail, not like it was when I was a kid.  So I was wondering if I could group switches in order to start the train on the wanted route.  Or if is possible to control all the necessary switches but with build in delays between the firing of the request. 

Late Starter

I'm pretty sure that not only could you group the switches to be thrown together when needed, you can use the record and playback functions to orchestrate the order in which the switches in the different groups or individually are thrown.

I think you can "record" an operating session using DCS, but I've never tryed it.

The existing DCS ( I’m not sure how to define it) gives you 3 different record/ playback sessions with the remote. If you want to throw switches and activate accessories you need an AIU unit. I’m not sure about the new systems without the remote.

Alas, I'm still trying to understand the problem.  As I understand it, the turnouts which send the train between the two loops is irrelevant for the automation problem.  So focusing on the loop with the 4 turnouts:

Obviously with 4 turnouts there are 16 combinations.  As I see it, only a few of them are "useful" without digressing into anti-derailing. If the train is just running the oval, all turnouts are straight.  Another would be figure 8 where all turnouts are diverge.  Then there's the two diagonal crossovers with two of the four turnouts in diverge.

So I'm still confused as to what is being automated.

For example, I can imagine how an operator would want, say, just 4 buttons or maybe a 4-position rotary switch to select the 4 routes shown.  So there would be some automation(?) to correctly translate the 4 routes into actual turnout commands.  And there is some electrical finagling with parallel wiring and such.

Or, more complex, I can imagine how an operator would want the train to run some number of loops Clockwise, then crossover and run some number of loops Counterclockwise, then crossover, and repeat forever.

The DCS "record" function may indeed be a possible solution.  My concern is this has FIXED timing in the recorded program.  So the choreography of turnout positions will only work for a given engine speed which would be included in the record.  So a record might in words go something like:

Position engine at 12 o'clock on the oval (i.e., a known position).  Then playback the record:

Set engine speed to 20sMPH,  set turnout 1 to diverge, wait 5 seconds, set turnout 1 back to straight, set turnout 2 to diverge, wait 15 seconds, set turnout 3 to diverge, slow engine speed to 5sMPH, wait 30 seconds, and so on..

Maybe that's what is desired?