I have some working prototypes at this point. I became confident enough in the approach to begin constructing the table while provisioning for the block detection scheme. My son is eager to see trains rolling so I took a break from the programming aspect for a bit.
I am not aware of JMRI support for TMCC. TMCC is a proprietary "closed" system and I am fairly certain Lionel requires licensing to publish software/hardware that interacts over it. I would be excited to see either DCS or TMCC go open source, but I am not holding my breath. Regardless, TMCC equipment is expensive and there is a wider variety of equipment that talks directly over DCC (for example Walther switch machines have built in DCC decoders whereas going the TMCC route requires a switch machine + a Lionel accessory hub).
Furthermore, my personal objective is to not be limited to logic and accessories MTH or Lionel have released. There is much more support for doing things custom using Arduino with DCC. The latest DCC spec added bi-directional communication which is required for any position recognition system. I highly doubt that MTH or Lionel will be enhancing their protocols to do the same. I am using programmable ESU decoders that support this feature.
If you are a programmer, the rest will make sense. JMRI self-admittedly is not a full automation system. It can be configured to automate some common consists and routes. However, it won't do anything dynamically following a rules engine or training data. For full automation, I view it as a good start to learn from others and have common class libraries scaffolded and provisioned. For example, it can safely navigate a single engine around the track. However, when blocks come under contention, logic is needed to issue DCC commands to resolve this. They offer some suggestions on strategies like locking the entire block path, locking blocks just in time, and others. Right now, I think JMRI will do one or the other in a haphazard manner based on a user setting. A real railroad would not have passenger service sitting at the station until a train 300 miles away finishes delivering coal. : )
