Railway scale model simulator

Abstract

The Ada programming language has been used for more than 12 years in our classes of concurrent and real time programming. This teaching includes also programming assignment based on various equipment and in particular on railway scale models. Moreover, students have had inexpensive Ada 95 programming environments on PC/Windows at their disposal for several years. They are therefore able to prepare the assignment at home and use the laboratory equipment intensively. The last step was to provide them with a simulator of a railway scale model. This software completely simulates the behaviour of real models and like real models, it illustrates the concepts inherent of concurrent and real time programming. Furthermore, the students are very enthusiastic about its use. The writing of programs controlling trains is based upon the Ada tasks and the new features provided with the 95 version of the language (protected objects, requeue, System Annex).