Yesterday was a great operating session on the St Charles Branch full of old friends and some new milestones! First, my good friend Stuart was in town, so he and local good friend Patrick came over for a 3-person ops session. We ran three of four scheduled trains, including the Black Mountain Local which made a run to the new Gin Creek Branch and Kemmerer Gem No.2 tipple on the upper deck–this was the first use of the upper deck in an ops session which is exciting. The branch is a blast to switch because the only run-around is the tipple track at Kemmergem, the tail track is short (but not annoying short… it’ll hold 2 locos and 2 hoppers), and there’s a small loader on a facing-point stub switch at the end of the branch. It means placing the caboose and cars for the small loader behind the empties on the tipple track, moving the locos to the other end, and using the string of loads and empties to work the stub tracks and push the caboose and small tipple loads onto the main where the train has to back up the branch to get them. Takes some thinking. It’s also awesome to work the tracks at eye level where you really get a railfan’s perspective! I also finally have enough tipples to justify two Southern mine runs plus the L&N’s mine run which means there’s really no “bad job” on the layout–you’re doing switching no matter what, and you’re either working the tipples or handling long cuts of hoppers around S-curves and wyes with a trio of units and too few yard tracks (also challenging).

We cut the ops session short to head over to an open house for Bob Bandy who lives nearby and has an enormous and beautifully done western-themed layout. While there, I ran into a couple more old friends who used to operate on my previous layout, Nathan and Seth. They came over after we were done at Bob’s and ran the last train (St. Charles Switcher to Mayflower). I think a good time was had by all.

Notable “firsts”:

• First use of the upper deck!
• First official use of “yard limits” to control movements in St Charles–the rule on the fascia simply says “yard limit: proceed at restricted speed–coordinate movements with other train crews”
• First “meet” of two trains during an ops session. The schedule is designed to avoid having two trains in the same area at the same time. However, the yard limit came in handy when Train 61 (St Charles Local) was a little long working St Charles. Using one of the yard tracks as an impromptu passing siding, 61 cleared the main and enabled the L&N’s CV Local to get back to Pennington without too much delay after completing its work at Mayflower
• First use of a Digitrax UT6 during an ops session. It’s got some great features that make it more capable than a UT4 (my normal throttle), but having no “stop” point on the knob is tricky with so much momentum built into the decoders–not a show stopper, but it will take some getting used to

Learning points and observations:

• The 3:1 fast clock continues to work well and keeps crews from rushing
• I tried to give the St Charles Local a single tipple to switch to keep things more interesting, but there really isn’t time in the timetable (based on the real-world timetable)–I’ll probably stick with just drop offs and pick ups for future runs which still makes for an interesting train due to the wye and limited yard tracks available
• The Gin Creek Branch on the upper deck still needs some refinement of the trackwork. One switch was causing one locomotive to consistently derail–this was remedied with the installation of a guard rail mid-session, but there was still a bit more “clicking” over certain sections of track that I want fixed before installing scenery

This session left me super motivated to keep extending the tracks on the upper deck, though I may pause to rough in the scenery around Kemmergem first. But first, I’ll be off to the Colorado Railroad Prototype Modeler’s meet (RPM meet) in Greely, CO next week where I look forward to taking over at least a chunk of the modeling area with Appalachian coal field models… I hope Patrick brings some of his Chessie and early CSX hoppers so we can complete the infiltration.

Last night marked another successful operating session on the St Charles Branch–the first with the scenery base in place and perhaps the last lower-deck only session. We ran a full 1968 session with three trains, all led by aging first-gen power. First up was the L&N’s CV Local with Patrick at the controls and Rick making his debut as a conductor. A pair of loads picked up at the trailing point operation at Maness (off the layout) gave the crew a little extra to work around all shift. While the CV Local was up the Bailey’s Creek Branch, I ran Southern Train 61, brining in a couple dozen empties from Andover and picking up last night’s loads from the tiny yard at St Charles. For the first time, train 61 was led by a trio of grungy F-units.

After waiting a bit for the slower-than-normal work of train 61 to finish up in St Charles, the CV Local tied up in Pennington staging before Patrick and Rick fired up the pair of local F-units for the Southern’s St Charles Switcher. Blocking their train in the yard, the crew set out to work four loaders including the two new stand-in mock-ups in St Charles. The job took 8 fast-clock hours to complete due to all four operations being stub-ended and requiring run-arounds and removal of loads before spotting empties–’twas the lot of those who worked this line!

“Firsts” and experiments for this session

• First session with zero derailments from poor track or cars (we did have an operator-induced derailment, but I won’t say who…)
• Working automatic crossing signals in St Charles (train 61 had them ringing for a good 20 minutes straight… delightful!)
• Finished coal loads instead of just foam
• Four actual loaders (mock-ups) to work instead of just tracks
• Complete set of first-gen power (5 Southern F-units and 1 L&N RS3)
• First operational use of the many new brush-based handbrakes
• First session with a full scenery base and ballast
• Cranked the momentum up about 50% from last time–made train handling more realistic and engaging (I think)

Areas for improvement:

• The 4:1 fast clock is putting too much time-pressure on crews–to keep the relaxed atmosphere, I’ll be dropping the fast clock to 3:1

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