I'm Gazz, i kinda get obscessed with projects, so back in 2012 i spent over a thousand pounds buying the entire driving desk from a German Wittenberger Steuerwagen... that's the driving trailer for BR111 or BR110 loco's. This is what i have: Top image is the driving desk just before it was removed from the scrapped trailer, bottom is the items when i got them home, after an 1800 mile round trip from england to germany to collect the parts (i did go past where the parts were located to Berlin, just to ride on the bus route 137.. which was the 92 route... in Omsi) I also have the base panels that go under the desk to the floor with the wiper lever and heating switches, emergency brake lever, and a drivers seat. I was slowly converting the controls to work with the computer, switches going through multiple "minimus usb boards" running KADE, the levers going through arduino's running a joystick sketch, The whole lot running through the 'raildriver joystick interface'.. as it doesnt look like train simulator will ever implement the joystick buttons and axis commands in the trains input mappers. The gauges and lights... i was working with someone on the Zusi forum on a program that read the train simulator values and outputted them to an arduino, so the gauges needles and lights mimicked what was on the screen. The EBuLa unit is a complete unit... a full computer, it boots up, but doesnt have the pcmcia card present to load the timetables... i will most likely just use the screen and button panel from that, hooked upto the sim to mimick the EBuLa displays in the vR Expert Line loco's i drive. I'd also modified the power lever, instead of only having the 4 notches.. off / run down / drive / and notch up, i made adjustable cams so i could have the lever work for different loco's. i.e. a linear up down motion, a centre notch sp up for power, down for brakes, and various versions of notches along the linear lever's motion, so i wasnt stuck to only ever driving the BR111 style loco's. Then... real life got in the way, and my simulator project has been in storage for a few years, along with my Omsi NG272 bus cab project that was about 90% compleated... even tho my GF at the time objected to having basically a real bus cab in the living room. I wore a real BVG bus drivers cap with the TrackIr sensors on it.. allowing the game view to move where ever i looked, the plan is to eventually use either a couple of 60 inch plus TV's or a projector for the main display of the simulators, hopefully in a dedicated room. As the real driving desk project is going to take ages to complete... I spent a few nights (like from 1am to 6 am.. my most productive time) in my then local Hackspace and built a mini control panel roughly based on the BR4XX series EMU's desks: i stuck a saitek throttle quadrant on the right hand side to give me brake levers for driving other trains.. i'll re-make the mini driving desk one day to have brake levers built into it as well. (i have disabilities, and can be stuck in bed for ages, so the mini driving desk sits on an overbed table, or can be used like a raildriver at any computer desk) The SBahn driver is scratch built... before people ask where to buy one from. The lever i made on the lathe from a slice of 5 inch diamiter alluminium bar stock, the lever top is delrin turned to shape, and the top pushes down to activate a switch for the Sifa reset button in the sim, (involving a fair bit of milling, as i wanted a proper clunky DB made switch in there) The switches were spares i had from buying the parts for the main driving desk, and some industrial switches (the reversing switch operates a potentiometer, like the power lever as train simulator expects a linear input for that control, not a switched one.. from the steam loco abilites of the sim i guess) The top was cut on the laser cutter.. i managed to find some laminate that was the exact shade of blue for German steuerwagen driving desks... in a skip outisde a kitchen fitters... someone out there has a kitchen with Deutscher Bahn steuerwage blue work tops
