I tend to prefer my interlocking towers and interlocking machines "in the wild" that means in service on a real railroad and not "in a zoo" (tourist line) or stuffed (in a museum). Now while something like HARRIS tower and its PLC controlled Model 14 or SoNoToMo and its interactive lever frame are great fun in some way it would have been better had they still been in service, invulnerable to Chinese cyber attack. However today I have discovered an interesting example of an interlocking machine that was neither caught for a Zoo or stuffed for a museum. This one was hand built from scratch for a model railroad and while I don't think it would pass muster at GRS it is certainly better than what most people use on their layouts.
Yup, you are seeing that correctly. This person has built a replica GRS interlocking machine entirely out of wood, from scratch. The best part is that it is being wired up to run the
largest New York City Subway model layout in North Dakota. I'm actually nt exactly what if any interlocking logic it uses, but there are a while mess of relays involved so its not completely braindead.
I have to give major props to the wiring job as well.
The builder would have actually prefered a US&S machine (and you can see some of the design elements), but the pistol grips were easier to implement and also control the model train stuff. Still, I'm not complaining.
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