Had a great small operating session with a new operator, Rick Trinkle. Rick is an O-scaler and serious BN modeler, so I tried to show him that the hills are greener in the HO scale Appalachians. We took our time and ran three trains over about 3 1/2 hours circa 1976. It was amazing how much more “in role” the layout seems with a few mountains painted on the backdrop and the basic hills down. The layout also cooperated more than usual with only a few slight hiccups… each time is an improvement.
One new thing I added to operations was an “origin” column in the master switch list to go along with the “destination.” This allowed us to not only build a custom switch list with the cars in our outbound train, but it allowed us to search through the master switch list to identify the cars we should be picking up to make it a complete switch list. Going to stick with this!
There were some “firsts” in this session:
- First operating session with any “green” on the layout
- First use of an “origin” column in the master switch list
- First use of a TCS Wow Sound decoder (a replacement for the burnt out LokSound in my L&N C420)–sounded amazing, especially shoving cuts of cars up the hill to Mayflower!
Learning points:
- Gravity-assisted switching moves are useful and doable with the “handbrakes”–we used the brake above the yard twice to move the caboose from one track to another using gravity instead of a long run-around–saved a lot of time!
- Still a couple derailments, both Tangent cars… very odd since these are the heaviest cars on my layout
- Still need a couple more “handbrakes” in spots to keep cars from rolling when spotted–these can be the simpler static paint brush variety
Dan
Great progress on the railroad. Really like the post on the Op Session, looks like a fun layout to operate. Could you elaborate on the “origin” column and other details of how you make a switch list? Do you use a system of car requests from the mines?
Scenery is looking good. Amazing how just the backdrop adds so much. Looking forward to that bridge scene.
HINT: next op session maybe hit video on the cell phone.
Blessings
Bill, since it’s a dead-end branch, the “origin” column basically states the current location of the car at the start of the session, either a tipple or a staging location. The empties were assigned to mine requests offline at Andover/Appalachia, so this part is not modeled on the layout. If they want, a crew can build a tailored switch list by looking at all the cars in their train and marking the delivery locations based on the master switch list. Conversely, the crew can now build a “pick up” switch list by combing through the master switch list and looking for cars that match the towns they’ll be serving and car destinations that match their instructions. The “origin” column makes this second part possible. Previously a crew would have to show up in a town before being able to find car numbers for their pick-up.
Thanks Dan